\ 


NOV  I  ^  1917 


BR    148    .V47    1917 

Vernon,  Ambrose  White,  1870 

1951. 
Some  turning-points  in 

church  history 


SOME  TURNING-POINTS 
IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 


SOME  TURNING-POINTS  I 

IN  ; 

CHURCH  HISTORY^,.^^ 

NOV  17  191^ 

BEING  V'^^y 

THE  SOUTHWORTH  LECTURES  (£/  D(^ \{,}^l%\ V^''^ 

IN  ANDOVER  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY'        "*^— *" 

FOR  THE  YEAR  1915  j 


AMBROSE  WHITE  VERNON 

Minister  of  Harvard  Church 
Brookline,  Mass. 


THE   PILGRIM   PRESS 
BOSTON  CHICAGO 


Copyright  1917 
By  frank  M.  SHELDON 


THE  PILGRIM   PRESS 
BOSTON 


TO  MY  TEACHER   AND   GUmE 

ARTHUR  CUSHMAN  McGIFFERT 

PROFESSOR   OF  CHURCH  HISTORY  IN  UNION  THEOLOGICAL 

SEMINARY,   NEW  YORK   CITY, 

IN  ABIDING  ADMIRATION  AND   AFFECTION 


NOTE 

These  lectures  are  an  attempt  to  consider  those  par- 
ticular crises  in  Church  History  which  have  been  so 
far  reaching  as  to  determine  the  form  of  the  organ- 
ization of  the  Christian  Churches.  Their  polity 
has  been  determined  chiefly,  I  believe,  by  four 
outstanding  historical  events;  the  founding  of 
the  Church,  the  establishment  of  the  Christian 
Ministry,  the  organization  of  delimited  National 
Churches  and  the  formation  of  free  Churches, 
independent  of  both  ecclesiastical  and  civil 
authority.  One  lecture  is  devoted  to  each  of 
these  pivotal  events  and  to  them  a  fifth  is  added 
which  deals  with  the  establishment  of  free  churches 
on  the  shores  of  America. 

The  first  of  these  lectures  appeared  in  The  Harvard 
Theological  Review  for  January,  1917,  and  three 
of  them  have  been  delivered  at  Union  Theological 
Seminary. 


CONTENTS 

LECTURE  PAGE 

I    The  Founding  of  the  Church  ...        3 

II    The    Beginnings     of    the     Christian 

Ministry 33 

III    The    Beginnings     of     the     National 

Churches  63 

IV    The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches      93 

V    Contribution  of  Congregationalism  to 

Church  Polity 125 


LECTURE   I 
THE    FOUNDING   OF   THE    CHURCH 


LECTURE   I 
THE   FOUNDING   OF    THE    CHURCH 

The  church  has  come  to  have  an  enduring 
place  not  only  in  history  but  in  thought.  At 
least  since  the  writing  of  The  City  of  God  it  has 
decided  some  of  the  most  vital  questions  con- 
fronting us  because  of  a  peculiar  sanctity  at- 
tached to  it.  It  is  not  therefore  out  of  place 
to  demand  from  time  to  time  that  it  show  us  its 
credentials.  The  present  lecture  is  an  attempt 
to  discover  if  there  is  anything  peculiarly 
sacred  about  the  manner  of  its  founding  that 
would  justify  us  in  ascribing  unique  spiritual 
authority  to  it. 

And  the  surprising  fact  which  we  discover  is, 
that  we  cannot  discover  any  actual  founding 
of  the  church  whatever.  We  cannot  be  sure 
that  the  church  was  founded  in  any  accurate 
sense  of  that  term;  it  is  probably  more  in 
accord  with  the  facts  to  say  that  the  movement 
which  eventually  became  known  as  the  church 
grew.  Creation  by  fiat  seems  as  mythical  in 
this  sphere  as  in  more  material  realms.  It 
seems  as  if  there  were  a  church  almost  before 
its  members  knew  it. 

In  endeavoring  to  show  that  the  founding  of 
the  church  is  obscure  and  to  discover  some  rea- 

3 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

sons  for  such  obscurity,  we  shall  be  obliged  to 
see  if  we  can  trace  the  rise  of  the  idea  of 
the  church  in  the  minds  of  the  early  friends 
and  disciples  of  Jesus.  Of  course  ideas  and 
words  are  never  quite  conterminous.  A  word 
never  covers  an  idea.  If  a  word  is  laid  on  top 
of  an  idea,  the  idea  peeps  out  all  around  it.  Yet 
at  the  same  time  before  an  idea  can  clothe  itself 
with  a  word  it  is  in  a  pre-natal  state  and  can- 
not be  said  to  be  properly  born.  And  so,  it 
seems  to  me,  our  first,  but  not  our  only,  duty 
in  attempting  to  come  upon  the  birth-hour  of 
the  Christian  church,  is  to  discover,  if  we  may, 
when  the  word  ^^ church''  was  first  applied, 
either  by  its  friends  or  its  foes  or  its  members, 
to  the  group  of  people  who  were  held  together 
by  common  devotion  to  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
whom  they  recognized  as  the  Christ. 

Strictly  speaking,  there  is  only  one  thing  to 
say:  that  we  do  not  know  when  this  word  was 
first  applied.  But  because  we  cannot  know  pre- 
cisely, we  are  not  excused  from  finding  out  all 
that  we  can  know;  because  our  sources  are  not 
all  that  we  would  wish  them  to  be,  there  is  no 
good  reason  for  refusing  to  find  out  from  them 
all  that  they  have  to  tell  us.  We  must  there- 
fore examine  those  early  chapters  of  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles  which  contain  virtually  all  that 
has  even  the  faintest  suggestion  of  being  first- 
hand information  about  the  earliest  months 
and  years  in  and  about  Jerusalem  after  the 
death  of  Jesus. 


The  Founding  of  the  Church 

There  are  so  few  things  that  are  certain 
about  the  authorship  of  the  historical  books  of 
the  New  Testament  that  it  is  refreshing  to 
come  upon  one  of  the  few  in  connection  with 
this  book  of  the  Acts.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  it  was  written  by  the  same  hand  as  that 
which  wrote  the  Third  Gospel.  In  the  preface 
to  that  Gospel,  the  author  virtually  tells  us  that 
he  has  consulted  various  sources  for  informa- 
tion. The  structure  and  language  of  the  Acts 
lead  us  to  the  supposition  that  when  he  came 
to  write  the  Acts  he  followed  the  practice  he 
had  used  in  wl^iting  the  Gospel.  Students  of 
the  book  have  fathered  many  theories  concern- 
ing its  structure,  but  they  have  had  most  to 
say  about  two  sources  which  many  of  them 
have  believed  to  underlie  this  work.  One  of 
these  is  the  familiar  *^We''  source,  so  called 
because  of  the  sudden  and  unexplained  appear- 
ance of  the  first  personal  pronoun  in  some  of 
the  later  travels  of  Paul;  the  other  has  been 
even  more  vaguely  denominated  and  it  has 
been  supposed  to  underlie  the  first,  say,  twelve 
chapters  of  the  book,  which  are  devoted  to  giv- 
ing us  a  picture  of  the  beginnings  of  the  church 
in  Jerusalem.  Harnack,  who  has  recently  made 
a  valiant  attempt  to  identify  the  author  of  the 
^*We'^  passages  with  the  author  of  the  entire 
work,  still  admits  Luke's  use  of  probably  writ- 
ten sources  for  the  first  portion  of  the  book.^ 
The  book  itself  cannot  have  been  written  of 

1  Lukas  der  Arzt,  pp.  84-6.     Die  Apostelgeschichte,  Capitel  5. 

5 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

course  before  the  last  event  therein  narrated 
— the  arrival  of  Paul  in  Eome.  By  that  time, 
as  the  letters  of  Paul  testify,  the  word 
^^ church''  was  applied  as  a  matter  of  course 
to  the  local  Christian  communities.  The  author 
of  the  Acts,  a  Pauline  admirer,  would,  there- 
fore, be  accustomed  to  use  the  word  ^* church'' 
for  the  various  groups  of  Christian  disciples 
of  whom  he  was  writing  and  in  particular  for 
the  church  at  Jerusalem,  which  Paul  so 
peculiarly  revered.  Under  these  circum- 
stances, we  must  attribute  either  to  a  phenom- 
enal intuition  or  to  his  sources  the  astonishing 
fact  that  until  ^Hhe  persecution  against  the 
church  that  was  in  Jerusalem"  arose  on  the 
outburst  and  martyrdom  of  Stephen,^  we  have 
only  one  single  instance  of  the  use  of  the  word 
*^ church"  for  the  Christian  circle. 

We  hear  of  the  filling  out  of  the  apostolate, 
of  the  descent  of  the  spirit  in  the  upper  room, 
of  the  large  addition  to  the  Christian  company 
through  the  inspired  speech  of  Peter,  of  the 
first  startling  miracle  performed  by  him  and 
John,  of  the  imprisonment  of  the  apostles  and 
their  courage  and  release,  of  the  growth  of  the 
*^ multitude  which  believed"  and  of  their 
brotherly  life,  and  though  it  seems  to  us  the 
most  natural  thing  in  the  world  to  speak  of 
these  events  as  the  beginnings  of  the  church, 
that  notable  word  is  not  once  employed.  We 
are  further  instructed   concerning  the   deceit 

^Ads  8:1. 

6 


The  Founding  of  the  Church 

and  death  of  Ananias  and  Sapphira,  of  the  re- 
newed imprisonment  and  release  of  the  apos- 
tles, of  the  strife  between  the  Hellenists  and 
the  Hebrews,  of  the  appointment  of  seven  men 
to  see  that  they  were  treated  equally  in  the  dis- 
tribution of  food,  of  the  character  and  genius 
of  Stephen,  of  his  epoch-making  speech  in  the 
temple,  of  the  rage  of  his  hearers  and  of  his 
martyrdom;  and  though  we  should  expect  the 
word  ^^ church''  in  every  paragraph,  it  occurs 
but  once  as  a  designation  of  the  disciples.  And 
its  occurrence  is  neither  in  connection  with  any 
of  the  pivotal  events  of  these  stirring  days, 
nor  in  the  heart  of  any  of  the  narratives,  nor 
in  those  wonderful  speeches  of  Peter  and 
Stephen,  so  full  of  verisimilitude  and  breath- 
ing the  spirit  of  the  most  primitive  Christian 
theology ;  we  find  it  in  what  I  think  may,  under 
these  circumstances,  be  confidently  regarded 
as  one  of  those  seams  with  which  an  author  is 
accustomed  to  join  together  independent  nar- 
ratives. Just  at  the  close  of  the  story  of  the 
death  of  Ananias  and  Sapphira,  and  before 
the  transition  to  the  healing  ministry  of  Peter 
and  the  imprisonment  of  the  apostles,  we  read 
these  words:  ^*And  great  fear  came  upon  the 
whole  church  and  upon  all  who  heard  these 
things.''^  This  is  the  solitary  use  of  that 
classic  word  in  The  Book  of  the  Acts  until  the 
time  of  Stephen.  Instead  of  this  word 
*^ church/'   which   we   should  have  used   con- 

8  Ads  5  :  11. 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

stantly  and  which  all  our  teachers  use 
constantly  in  the  retelling  of  these  brilliant 
narratives,  we  find  other  words,  much  less 
pretentious,  to  us  much  less  characteristic — 
*^ believers, ''  ^^ brethren,''  ^Hheir  own  com- 
pany," and  *^ disciples.''  Of  these  the  word 
^^ disciples"  seems  to  be  the  technical  word,  or 
to  be  becoming  the  technical  word,  for  this  un- 
technical  group  of  people  who  were  expecting 
their  Lord  from  heaven.  It  might  have  re- 
mained such,  had  not,  as  we  read,  ^^the  disciples 
been  called  Christians  first  at  Antioch. "  *  In- 
deed until,  in  the  last  part  of  the  eleventh 
chapter,  after  the  conversion  of  both  Paul  and 
Cornelius  has  been  recorded,  we  get  to  Antioch, 
whither  certain  men  of  Cyprus  and  Cyrene  fled 
on  the  death  of  Stephen  and  where  they 
preached  the  Lord  Jesus  to  Greeks  as  well  as 
Jews,  the  word  ^^ church"  is  used  only  in  the 
seams  of  the  narrative.  Even  in  those  seams, 
it  occurs  but  four  times  and  save  for  the  obvi- 
ously editorial  sentence,  ^^So  the  church  had 
peace,"  ^  it  does  not  occur  at  all  in  that  portion 
of  the  early  chapters  of  Acts  which  on  alto- 
gether other  grounds  Harnack  assigns  to  the 
ancient  Jerusalemic  source.^ 

This  peculiar  state  of  affairs  must  not  be 
dismissed  from  our  minds  until  we  have  in- 
quired whether  it  may  have  any  historical  sig- 

<  Acts  11  :36. 

^  Acts  9  :S1. 

«  Die  Apostelgeschichte,   pp.    1j^8-152. 


The  Founding  of  the  Church 

nificance  for  our  inquiry  concerning  the  origin 
of  the  church. 

I  have  said  that  the  word  ^ ^church''  was 
never  used  in  the  heart  of  the  early  narratives 
or  in  the  course  of  the  early  speeches  to  de- 
scribe the  disciples  of  Jesus.  But  once  in  the 
midst  of  Stephen's  speech  we  find  these  words: 
''This  is  he  [that  Moses]  .  .  .  which  was  in 
the  church  in  the  wilderness  with  the  angel 
that  spake  to  him  in  the  m,ount  Sinai. ' '  ^  The 
word  ' '  church, ' '  though  apparently  not  applied 
to  the  Christian  groups  in  the  earliest  times, 
was  applied  by  a  prominent  member  of  those 
groups  to  the  Israelitish  nation  quite  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course.  That  this  is  no  mere  accident  is 
abundantly  proved  by  reference  to  the  Septua- 
gint.  Here  we  find  the  word  ^'ecclesia,'' 
''church,"  used  71  times  to  translate  "kahaP' 
or  its  derivatives.  It  is  also  used  23  times  in 
those  parts  of  the  Septuagint  for  which  we 
have  no  Hebrew  original.  It  is  always  em- 
ployed as  the  equivalent  of  our  word  "  assem- 
bly'^  or  "company.''  It  is  the  word  usually 
employed  to  denote  the  assembly  of  Israel,  in 
what  we  should  call  the  ecclesiastical  or  exclu- 
sive sense.  When,  for  example,  we  read  that 
"an  Ammonite  and  a  Moabite  shall  not  enter 
into  the  assembly  of  God  forever,"  the  word 
for  "assembly"  is  the  word  "ecclesia."  When 
it  is  said  that  "the  transgressor  shall  be  cut 
off  from  the  assembly  of  my  people,"  it  is 

■>  Ads  7  :  38. 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

again  the  word  '^ecclesia''  that  is  used.  Har- 
nack  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  in  the 
Septuagint  ^^ecclesia'^  is  usually  the  word  used 
to  translate  *'kahal/'  the  most  sacred  word 
for  the  entire  nation,  whereas  *  ^  synagogue  ^ '  is 
used  to  translate  ^^edhah/^  a  more  secular 
word.^ 

It  therefore  seems  proper  to  suppose  that 
the  reason  why  the  early  Christians  did  not 
employ  the  word  ^*  church '^  to  designate  their 
own  gatherings  is  because  they  used  it  to 
designate  the  assembly  of  the  Jews  to  which 
they  still  regarded  themselves  as  belonging. 
And  that  the  author  of  the  Acts  preserved  this 
interesting  fact  in  his  sources  may  be  due  to 
his  knowledge  of  the  Septuagint  from  which 
his  Old  Testament  citations  are  taken. 

While  the  fact  that  the  early  disciples  of 
Jesus  still  regarded  themselves  as  ^'Hebrews 
of  the  Hebrews'^  is  well  known  of  course  to 
scholars,  though  not  always  duly  appreciated 
even  by  them,  it  is  widely  ignored  by  most  of 
us.  This  ignorance  of  ours  makes  it  still  dif- 
ficult for  us  to  do  justice  to  the  position  and 
the  emotions  of  that  mother  ** church^'  in  Jeru- 
salem. It  is,  however,  written  clearly  on  the 
records  that  the  early  Christians  *^were  con- 
tinually in  the  temple  blessing  God,^'  ^  that  the 
apostles  '^went  up  to  the  temple  at  the  hour  of 
prayer, ' '  ^^  after  they  had  seen  the  risen  Lord, 

8  Mission  und  Ausbreitung  des  Christentums,   p.   292.      Note  4- 
»  Luke  24  :  63. 
^°  Acts  3:1. 

10 


The  Founding  of  the  Church 

just  as  ihej  had  before,  and  that  they  preached 
in  one  of  the  porches  of  the  temple " — and 
probably  in  the  synagogues — as  those  who  felt 
themselves  there  at  home. 

The  old  Latin  prologue  to  Mark^s  Gospel 
asserts  that  Mark,  after  having  become  a  Chris- 
tian, cut  off  his  thumb  so  that  he  should  not  be 
eligible  for  the  priesthood.^^  This  tradition 
confirms  the  letter  and  the  spirit  of  the  early 
chapters  of  Acts,  and  indicates  that  to  the  Jews 
faith  in  Jesus  as  Christ  did  not  disqualify  a 
man  for  ritual  service  in  the  holy  place  so 
surely  as  the  lack  of  a  thumb.  Nothing  was 
further  from  the  minds  of  the  disciples  than  to 
cut  themselves  off  from  the  church  or  assembly 
of  the  Jews.  Why  should  they  take  such  a 
step?  They  alone  among  their  people  had  been 
permitted  to  recognize  the  Messiah.  Soon  their 
leader  was  to  descend  from  heaven  to  restore 
the  kingdom  to  Israel  and  to  choose  from 
their  group  those  who  were  to  reign  over  the 
tribes  of  the  nation.  Would  such  a  confident 
hope  lead  them  to  make  less  or  more  of  those 
laws  which  had  been  given  to  prepare  the  way 
of  the  Lord  and  which  they  had  kept  in  com- 
pany with  him  I  He  was  crucified  not  for  de- 
nouncing the  Jews,  but  for  claiming  to  be  the 
Jews'  prince.  They  had  not  separated  from 
their  church  when  they  were  baptized  by  John ; 
thereby  they  had  been  only  more  surely  ad- 

"  Ads  S  :  11,  12. 

^"^Cf.  Weiss:    Das  alteste  Evangelium,  p.  400. 

11 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

mitted  into  membership  of  the  coming  king- 
dom of  the  Messiah.  And  when  either  at  Pen- 
tecost or  at  the  time  of  the  earthquake  they  had 
been  baptized  with  the  Holy  Ghost,  they  were 
not  thereby  separated  from  their  people;  they 
were  merely  given  the  power  to  bring  that  king- 
dom in.  More  than  ever  they  recognized  them- 
selves as  necessary  to  the  redemption  and  to 
the  exaltation  of  the  Jewish  nation.  It  was 
they  who  were  to  enable  their  countrymen  to 
repent  so  that  their  sins  might  be  blotted  out, 
and  in  consequence  the  Lord  might  be  sent  from 
heaven.  Hence  they  called  themselves  **  be- 
lievers'' as  distinguished  from  their  unbeliev- 
ing countrymen,  ^'disciples''  as  distinguished 
from  crucifiers  and  mockers  of  their  Messiah, 
and  *' brethren"  as  their  Lord  had  indeed  al- 
ready called  them;  but  the  thought  of  cutting 
themselves  off  from  the  church  of  the  Jews, 
the  assembly  of  the  people  of  God,  did  not 
occur  to  them  for  a  long  time.  And  until  it  so 
occurred  to  them,  the  church  of  Jesus  Christ, 
in  any  accurate  sense  of  the  words,  as  distin- 
guished from  the  church  of  the  Jewish  people, 
could  not  have  been  founded. 

When  we  ask  ourselves,  therefore,  regard- 
ing the  founding  of  the  Christian  church,  we 
ask  ourselves  to  discover  the  point  of  time  or 
the  point  of  consciousness  when  the  Christian 
disciples  regarded  themselves  not  as  a  part  of 
the  Jewish  nation  but  as  a  substitute  for  the 

12 


The  Founding  of  the  Church 

Jewish  nation,  not  as  belonging  to  the  people 
of  God  but  as  constituting  the  people  of  God. 

And  here  it  may  be  well  to  repeat  the  state- 
ment which  was  made  at  the  outset  and  which 
I  hope  has  become  already  better  established. 
We  cannot  come  upon  any  one  moment  of  his- 
tory when  the  church  was  founded;  we  cannot 
tell  whether  the  church  was  founded ;  it  is  prob- 
ably more  in  accord  with  the  facts  to  say  that 
it  grew.  Our  sources  do  not  record  any  final 
and  explicit  break  of  the  disciples  with  the 
Jewish  nation.  They  do,  however,  record  such 
a  change  of  the  relations  of  the  disciples  with 
the  Jewish  church  at  one  particular  point  and 
perhaps  also  at  one  particular  place  that  we 
may  say  that  then  the  church  consciousness, 
absent  before,  had  arisen. 

In  our  search  for  that  moment  when  the  early 
disciples  regarded  themselves  as  the  holy 
group  which  had  been  substituted  in  the  favor 
of  God  for  the  ancient  people  of  Israel,  we  find 
^YQ  events  which  chiefly  call  for  our  scrutiny. 
It  may  also  be  said  that  these  five  events  seem 
to  church  historians  somehow  or  other  to  mark 
the  beginning  of  the  church. 

The  first  of  these  events  occurred  while  our 
Lord  was  yet  upon  the  earth,  going  himself 
habitually  into  the  synagogue  on  the  Sabbath 
and  regarding  the  temple  as  his  Father  ^s  house. 
It  is  that  solemn  moment  that  is  set  aside  for 
us  all  from  other  moments  of  time,  when  at 
Caesarea  Philippi,  on  a  brief  retirement  from 

13 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

the  confines  of  Palestine,  Simon  Peter  recog- 
nized Jesus  of  Nazareth  as  the  Messiah.  Now 
there  can  be  no  question  that  that  moment 
marked  the  definite  recognition  of  the  supreme 
authority  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  that  it  helped 
to  give  to  the  words  spoken  on  the  mount  and 
by  the  sea,  to  the  parables  of  the  publican  and 
the  prodigal  and  the  ministering  Samaritan, 
the  carrying  power  through  which  they  swept 
through — and  swept  out — the  world.  But  does 
that  recognition  of  Jesus  as  the  Messiah 
amount  to  the  laying  of  the  corner  stone  of  the 
Christian  Church?  There  is  no  such  thought 
in  the  earliest  of  the  Gospels  which  report  the 
event.^^  Only  in  the  Gospel  of  Matthew  do  we 
find  an  interpolation  in  the  older  account  which 
might  be  construed  in  that  sense.  There  we 
read  that  Jesus  blessed  Peter  for  recognizing 
him  as  the  Messiah,  and  added,  **Thou  art 
Peter,  and  upon  this  rock  will  I  build  my 
church,  and  the  gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail 
against  it. ' '  " 

It  is  to  this  passage  that  those  resort  who  like 
to  call  Jesus  ^^the  Founder  of  the  Church.'' 
But  there  are  three  reasons  which  render  it  im- 
possible to  believe  that  we  have  here  to  do  with 
such  an  event.  In  the  first  place,  the  verb  is  in 
the  future  rather  than  in  the  present  tense.  If 
Jesus  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  personal  founder 
of  the  church,  it  must  be  at  some  future  and  un- 


13  Mark  8  :  29. 
"  Matt.  16  :  18. 


14 


The  Founding  of  the  Church 

discoverable  moment.  In  the  second  place,  the 
words,  if  spoken  by  Jesus,  would  almost  in- 
evitably have  been  treasured  with  his  most 
sacred  utterances.  It  is  well-nigh  inconceiv- 
able that  Mark  would  have  omitted  them  as  too 
unimportant  to  mention,  or  that  they  would 
have  found — as  seems  the  case — ^no  place  in 
the  Logia,  the  earliest  collection  of  Jesus'  say- 
ings. The  fact  that  the  word  '^church"  is 
never  put  into  Jesus'  mouth  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment except  here  and  in  another  passage  in 
this  same  Gospel  of  Matthew  is  very  significant. 
And  the  second  passage  bears  even  more  un- 
mistakable fniarks  of  a  late  origin.  There  Jesus 
is  represented  as  saying,  **If  a  brother  sin 
against  thee  and  thou  tell  it  to  the  church,  and 
he  refuse  to  hear  the  church,  let  him  be  unto 
thee  as  the  Gentile  and  the  publican.''''  Not 
only  the  word  ^'church"  but  the  words  *^ Gen- 
tile ' '  and  ' '  publican ' '  seem  utterly  out  of  place 
on  Jesus'  lips,  in  the  significance  in  which  they 
are  used.  Moreover  the  conception  of  Jesus' 
band  of  disciples  as  a  disciplinary  organization 
seems  quite  unhistorical.  If  Jesus  used  the 
words  at  all,  the  church  to  which  he  alluded  was 
the  Jewish  Church  and  not  the  Christian  one. 
And  in  the  third  place,  we  are  confident  that 
the  recognition  of  Jesus  as  the  Messiah  does 
not  mark  the  founding  of  the  Christian  Church, 
because  after  that  recognition  Jesus  went  with 
his  disciples  into  the  temple  and  purified  its 

15  Matt.  18  :  17. 

15 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

courts,  and  partook  of  the  feast  of  the  Passover 
with  his  disciples,  as  though  they  were  all  still 
members  of  the  Jewish  Church.  In  it,  indeed, 
he  had  peculiar  power,  but  to  it  he  and  they 
alike  belonged.  The  break  with  the  Jews  had 
not  yet  come. 

Weizsacker  and  Bacon  are  at  one  in  regard- 
ing Peter  rather  than  Jesus  as  the  Founder  of 
the  church.  They  regard  him  as  such,  how- 
ever, not  because  of  his  recognition  of  Jesus  at 
Csesarea  Philippi  as  the  Messiah,  but  because 
he  was  the  first  to  whom  Christ  was  revealed 
in  resurrection  glory."  ^^He  appeared  to 
Peter'' — this  phrase  out  of  the  15th  of  1st 
Corinthians  seems  to  them  to  point  to  a  greater 
vision  of  Peter  than  any  he  liad  while  Jesus 
walked  by  his  side,  and  in  virtue  of  which  he 
became  the  founder  of  the  Christian  Church. 
Yet  they  hesitate  to  say  definitely  that  the 
appearance  of  Jesus  to  Peter  marked  the 
founding  of  the  church ;  the  event  was  too  per- 
sonal for  that,  and,  as  personal,  it  has  quite 
disappeared  from  the  narrative  of  the  Acts. 
McGiffert,  who  inclines  to  the  belief  that  Peter 
was  the  ^^ second  founder  of  the  church''  ^^  does, 
however,  single  out  another  definite  moment — 
of  great  importance  in  Christian  history — for 
our  attention  in  seeking  for  the  origin  of  the 
church.     ^'That   Christianity  has  had   a  his- 

16  Weizsacker:    Das  apostoUsche  Zeitalter,   pp.  5,  13,  15.     Bacon:    Founding 
of  the  Church.     Chapter   2. 
"  Apostolic  Age,  p.  4S. 

16 


The  Founding  of  the  Church 

tory/'  lie  writes/^  "i^  due  to  the  fact  that  these 
disciples  did  not  go  back  disheartened  to  their 
old  pursuits  and  live  on  as  if  they  had  never 
known  Jesus,  but  that  on  the  contrary,  filled 
with  the  belief  that  their  Master  still  lived  and 
conscious  of  holding  a  commission  from  him, 
they  banded  themselves  together  with  the  re- 
solve of  completing  his  work  and  preparing 
their  countrymen  for  his  return.  Their  resolve, 
put  into  execution  when  they  left  Galilee  and 
returned  to  Jerusalem,  marks  the  real  starting- 
point  in  the  history  of  the  church. ' '  If  indeed 
they  came  to  any  such  clear-cut  resolve,  the  mo- 
ment of  that  resolve  plays  an  important  part 
in  the  gathering  together  of  Christian  believers, 
but  that  gathering  would  have  regarded  itself 
not  as  a  church  but  as  a  favored  group  within 
the  Jewish  Church.  Preuschen,  who  also  em- 
phasizes the  place  of  Peter  among  the  Chris- 
tian disciples,  seems  better  to  express  the  facts 
when  he  says,  *^  Peter  gathered  a  company  of 
like-minded  people,  but  without  giving  up  com- 
munion with  the  Jewish  people  and  the  Jewish 
faith. ''^^ 

The  Day  of  Pentecost  is  the  third  great  mo- 
ment in  the  history  of  Christianity  w'hich  has 
been  hit  upon  for  the  founding  of  the  Christian 
Church,  which  seems  so  curiously  to  baffle  our 
search.  Of  all  these  moments  it  seems  most 
widely  chosen  for  this  great  honor.     ^^  While 

18  Apostolic  Age,  p.  ^2. 

19  Handbuch    der    Kirchengeschichte :     Das    Altertum,    bearbeitet   von   Erwin 
Preuschen,  p.  37. 

17 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

the  apostles  and  disciples,''  writes  Philip 
Schaff,  ^^  about  one  hundred  and  twenty  in 
number,  no  doubt  mostly  Galileans,  were  as- 
sembled before  the  morning  devotions  of  the 
festal  day  and  were  waiting  in  prayer  for  the 
fulfilment  of  the  promise,  the  exalted  Saviour 
sent  from  his  heavenly  throne  the  Holy  Spirit 
upon  them  and  founded  his  church  upon  earth. 
The  church  of  the  new  covenant  was  ushered 
into  existence  with  startling  signs  which  filled 
the  spectators  with  wonder  and  fear. ' '  ^^  And 
George  P.  Fisher,  not  quite  so  certainly,  writes, 
^^With  the  day  of  Pentecost  the  career  of  the 
'Church  Militant'  fairly  begins. "^^  And  Wil- 
helm  Moller,  still  more  cautiously,  says,  *'The 
Spirit,  proceeding  from  the  Ascended  One,  not 
the  earthly  manifestation  of  Jesus  nor  his 
teaching  in  itself,  is  the  really  church-founding 
[element],  yet  even  this  [is  to  be  taken]  in  the 
sense  that  the  separation  of  this  particular  fel- 
lowship from  the  general  religious-national 
fellowship  of  the  Jewish  people  was  first  the 
result  of  a  gradual  process."-^ 

But  the  result  of  that  outpouring  of  the 
spirit  was  not  the  founding  of  a  church  but 
the  preaching  to  brethren  of  an  already  estab- 
lished church  by  those  who  were  thus  spiritu- 
ally endowed  from  on  high.  So  far  was  Peter, 
who  was  the  spokesman  of  those  thus  filled  with 
the  spirit,  from  thinking  that  a  new  church  had 

■     20  History  of  the  Christian  Church,  Vol.  I,  p.  228. 
^^Ibid.,  Vol.  I.  p.  19. 
^^Lehrbuch  der   Kirchengeschichte,  Vol.  I,  p.  60. 

18 


The  Founding  of  the  Church 

been  founded  and  that  he  had  been  cut  off  from 
his  people,  that  he  appealed  to  his  fellow  Jew- 
ish Church  members  to  hear  the  prophet  of 
whom  Moses  had  testified,  saying,  ^' Every  soul 
that  heareth  not  that  prophet  shall  be  cut  off 
from  among  the  people. '  '^^  Peter  evidently  ex- 
pected that  the  Lord  was  about  to  purify  that 
ancient  church,  which  had  been  almost  ^*  since 
the  world  began.''  It  is  impossible  therefore 
to  think  that  the  Day  of  Pentecost  marks  the 
moment  when  the  disciples  believed  themselves 
to  supplant  the  children  of  Israel  as  the  chosen 
people  of  God.  They  were  reformers,  not 
revolutionists. 

The  fourth  event,  of  sufficient  importance  to 
call  for  a  brief  mention,  is  the  choice  of  seven 
men  by  the  early  believers  to  see  to  it  that 
equitable  division  of  food  and  necessaries  of  life 
was  made  between  the  Jewish  and  Hellenistic 
widows  among  the  disciples  in  Jerusalem.  It 
is  hard  for  us  not  to  use  the  word  *^ church''  in 
this  connection,  but  it  does  not  appear  to  have 
entered  into  the  mind  of  the  author  of  the  Acts ; 
^^When  the  number  of  the  disciples  was  mul- 
tiplying," is  the  sentence  with  which  he  intro- 
duces the  narrative.^*  This  incident  was 
enhanced  in  its  importance  for  a  long  time  by 
the  almost  universal  belief  among  church  his- 
torians that  it  marked  the  institution  of  the 
diaconate,    thereby    regarded    as    the    earliest 


23  Acts  3  :  23. 
^i  Acts  6:1. 


19 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

body  of  which  they  had  positive  information  in 
the  early  church.  A  more  careful  reading  of 
the  account,  however,  has  brought  to  light  that 
these  seven  men  were  chosen  for  a  temporary 
and  definite  task,  and  that  they  are  never  once 
named  deacons  in  the  book  which  narrates 
their  selection  by  the  disciples.  Their  selection, 
therefore,  does  not  betray  any  church-con- 
sciousness. 

There  is  left  for  our  final  scrutiny  an  event 
that  is  connected  with  one  of  these  seven  men 
who  were  chosen  to  oversee  the  distribution 
of  food  among  the  widows  of  the  disciples  in 
Jerusalem.  Stephen  had  engaged  in  serious 
and  keen  dispute  with  the  members  of  one  of 
the  synagogues  in  Jerusalem.  It  is  not  alto- 
gether clear  what  that  dispute  was  about.  But 
so  fundamental  was  it  in  character  that  his 
opponents  summoned  him  before  the  council 
and  the  high  priest  called  upon  him  for  his  de- 
fence. Nothing  can  be  clearer  than  that 
Stephen  was  recognized  as  a  Jew  in  regular 
standing,  and  that  he  recognized  the  high  priest 
as  the  chief  power  in  the  church  to  which  he 
felt  that  he  belonged  and  concerning  which, 
indeed,  by  that  very  title  he  spoke  in  the  de- 
fence that  he  made  before  the  council.  To  him 
the  church  was  still  the  Jewish  church,  the 
people  of  God.  In  his  defence,  he  seems  to 
have  laid  emphasis  on  two  quite  diverse  points 
— the  blindness  of  heart  that  had  always  char- 
acterized Israel,  and  the  temporary  character  of 

20 


The  Founding  of  the  Church 

all  buildings  made  with  hands,  whether  syna- 
gogue, tabernacle,  or  even  temple.  The  report 
of  his  speech  is  too  fragmentary  for  us  to  be 
certain  concerning  his  thought.  That  he  men- 
tioned Jesus  is  clear,  but  precisely  what  he 
said  about  him  we  cannot  tell.  It  seems,  how- 
ever, overwhelmingly  probable  that  he  set  him 
higher  than  Moses  both  before  God  and  in  the 
church  of  the  Jewish  people.  At  the  close  of 
his  defence  the  council  and  the  witnesses  stoned 
him  to  death.  Thus  they  separated  him  from 
the  people  of  God,  from  the  church,  in  the  man- 
ner prescribed  in  the  law.  The  disciples  were 
aware  that  he  had  been  stoned  for  the  convic- 
tions which  many  of  them  shared.  It  may  be 
that  the  closest  friends  of  Jesus  did  not  agree 
with  Stephen  in  what  he  may  have  said  about 
the  temporary  character  of  Jewish  institutions, 
for  we  read  that  the  apostles  remained  at  Jeru- 
salem during  the  persecution  which  now  broke 
out  there  upon  the  disciples.  But  a  great  num- 
ber of  the  most  loyal  Christians  were  compelled 
to  flee  from  the  sacred  city,  under  a  virtual 
sentence  of  excommunication  from  the  church 
to  which  they  had  up  to  that  time  given  most 
devoted  adhesion.  The  authorities  of  the 
church  of  God  had  denied  their  right  to  par- 
take of  the  worship  of  the  temple  and  of  the 
privileges  and  promises  of  the  fathers.  What 
was  to  be  done?  In  the  Book  of  Acts  we  read: 
^^They  therefore  that  were  scattered  abroad 
upon  the  tribulation  that  arose  about  Stephen 

21 


Some  Turning-points  in  Church  History 

travelled  as  far  as  Phoenicia  and  Cyprus  and 
Antioch,  speaking  the  word  to  none  save  only 
to  the  Jews.  But  there  were  some  of  them,  men 
of  Cyprus  and  Cyrene" — of  the  very  syna- 
gogue to  which  Stephen  seems  to  have  been 
attached — ^^who,  when  they  were  come  to  An- 
tioch, spake  unto  the  Greeks  also,  preaching 
the  Lord  Jesus.  And  it  came  to  pass  that  even 
for  a  whole  year  they  were  gathered  together 
in  the  church,  and  that  the  disciples  were  called 
Christians  first  at  Antioch. ' '  ^^ 

The  fact  that  in  this  short  passage,  which  I 
have  curtailed  in  citing,  the  infrequent  word 
^' church'^  occurs  twice,  has  some  significance, 
particularly  as  ft  occurs  in  the  heart  of  the 
narrative;  but  the  strikins:  thing  is  that  the 
disciples  were  no  longer  Jews  either  in  their 
o^\Ti  eyes  or  in  the  eyes  of  outsiders.  They  were 
a  new  company,  made  up  of  Jews  and  Greeks,  a 
new  religious  group,  whose  main  characteristics 
were  developed  from  their  allegiance  to  a 
Christ,  whatever  that  term  may  have  meant  to 
those  who  first  dubbed  them  by  the  immortal 
nickname  ''Christian.'^  But  we  can  tell  what 
it  meant  to  the  disciples.  To  all  of  them, 
whether  Greeks  or  Jews,  Jesus  was  the  Christ. 
Certainly  here  has  arisen  the  consciousness  of 
being  a  peculiar  people  of  God,  of  having  a 
standing  with  the  Messiah,  which  the  Jews  as 
such  no  longer  shared  with  them.  Throughout 
the  book  of  the  Acts  we  find  a  continual  sense 

25  Acts  11  :  19,  20,  26. 

22 


The  Founding  of  the  Church 

of  tlie  turning  from  the  Jews,  who  rejected 
their  own  Christ,  to  the  Gentiles,  who  accepted 
the  Jewish  Christ  and  yet  no  longer  the  Jewish 
Christ.  For,  as  the  Fourth  Gospel  has  it,  he 
had  come  ^^unto  his  own  and  his  own  had  re- 
ceived him  not.  But  as  many  as  received  him, 
to  them  gave  he  the  right  to  become  children 
of  God,  who  were  born  not  of  blood  but  of 
God.''^®  Jesus  soon  ceased  to  be  the  prince 
of  the  Jewish  nation  and  became  ^^the  Head 
over  all  things  to  the  church,  which  is  .  .  .  the 
fulness  of  Him  that  filleth  all  in  all.''^^  The 
church  was  the  kingdom  of  God;  in  it  Jesus 
reigned;  to  it  he  brought  his  gifts.  It  was  the 
saints  in  Corinth  and  Rome  and  Ephesus  that 
were  to  judge  the  angels.^^  They  were  in  time 
past  no  people,  but  they  had  become  the  people 
of  God.^^  When  this  feeling  arose,  the  word 
^^  church, '*  heretofore  used  to  denote  assem- 
blies which  considered  themselves  sacred, 
whether  of  Diana  in  Ephesus  or  of  the  people 
of  Jehovah,  was  naturally  applied  to  the  Chris- 
tian disciples.  It  was  applied  at  first  perhaps 
to  all  Christian  disciples  in  their  capacity  of 
people  of  God,  but  it  soon  became  common  to 
call  each  local  Christian  assembly  by  that 
name. 

I  do  not  wish  to  be  understood  as  locating 
the  origin  of  the  church  by  detecting  the  pres- 

^6  John  1  :  12,  13. 

2'  Ephesians  1  :  22,  23. 

28  1  Corinthians  6  :  3. 

29  /  Peter  2  :  10. 

23 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

ence  or  absence  of  any  single  word.  The  word 
^^ church"  had  never  come  in  the  Septuagint  to 
have  a  strictly  sacred  meaning.  For  example, 
there  occurs  in  the  Psalms  the  phrase,  ^Hhe 
assembly  of  evil  doers, '^^^  where  the  word 
which  is  translated  by  '^ assembly'^  in  English 
is  translated  by  ^^ecclesia''  in  Greek.  We  must 
by  no  means  decide  the  origin  of  the  church  by 
the  mere  use  of  the  Greek  word  for  it.  And  yet 
I  feel  that,  roughly  speaking,  the  growth  of  the 
idea  ^* church"  among  the  disciples  may  be  said 
to  coincide  with  the  use  of  the  word  ^^ecclesia" 
to  designate  their  gatherings.  And  I  find  very 
great  significance  in  Epiphanius'  declaration — 
which  seems  to  bewilder  some  of  the  historians 
— that  the  Jewish  Christians  rejected  the  word 
^^ church"  as  a  designation  for  their  gatherings 
in  favor  of  the  word  *  ^  synagogue. "  ^^  They 
could  not  bring  themselves  to  give  their  endur- 
ing allegiance  to  anything  but  the  Jewish 
Church  nor  to  find  in  Jesus  anything  but  the 
Jewish  Messiah,  whom  they  were  fortunate 
enough  to  recognize.  I  feel  that  Weizsacker  is 
right  in  affirming  that  the  Christians  in  general 
would  not  call  themselves  a  synagogue,  because 
they  believed  themselves  to  be  in  possession  of 
the  kingdom  of  God  and  to  constitute  the  church 
of  God.^^  *^The  church  of  God"  was  perhaps 
the  first  name  rather  than  ^Hhe  church  of 
Christ,"  because  it  was  ^Hhe  people  of  God 

30  Psalms  26  :  5. 

^^Epiphanii  Opera:    ed.  Dindorfius,  Vol.  JI.  p.   110. 

^"^  Weizsacker:    Das   apostolische  Zeitalter,   pp.    39-40. 

24 


M 


The  Founding  of  the  Church 

and  not  'Hhe  people  of  Christ''  for  which  it  was 
substituted.^^ 

But  it  is  not  the  use  of  the  word  ''church" 
upon  which  I  would  place  the  chief  emphasis. 
It  is  used  but  23  times  in  the  entire  book  of  the 
Acts,^*  that  is  to  say,  infrequently  even  after 
the  founding  of  the  church  in  Antioch.  It  is 
true  that  while  it  is  little  used,  and  not  used  at 
all  in  most  of  the  early  chapters  of  the  Acts 
where  we  should  have  constantly  expected  it,  it 
is  used  constantly  in  the  letters  of  Paul.  But 
as  I  have  said,  we  must  not  depend  upon  the  use 
of  a  word  to  point  us  to  the  moment  when  the 
thing  the  word  denotes  arose.  Our  idea  of  the 
founding  of  the  church  depends  in  large  degree 
upon  the  connotation  of  the  word  ' '  church ' '  for 
us.  It  seems  to  me  that  by  the  word  "church'' 
the  early  Christians  meant  the  peculiar  people 
of  God.  In  Sohm's  masterly  Kirchenrecht  the 
church  is  said  to  signify  "a  gathering  of  the 
New  Testament  Covenant  people  before  and 
with  God."^^  That  they  were  His  peculiar 
covenant  people  seems  to  have  dawned  upon 
them  in  Antioch,  or  going  to  Antioch,  where 
they  were  first  set  off  from  the  rest  of  the 
world  as  Christians  at  about  the  time  when  that 
nickname  was  first  fastened  upon  them.  There- 
fore it  seems  to  me  correct  to  say  that  the 
church — in  the  sense  in  which  its  first  members 
understood    it — was    founded   neither   by   the 

33  C/.  Acts  20  :28;   Gal.  1  :  22;  1   Thess.  1:1. 

34  Cf.   Harnack:  Lukas  der  Arzt,  p.  25,  n.  3. 
^^Kirchenrecht,  Vol.   I,  p.   18. 

25 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

Lord  (save  as  all  things  were  believed  to  be 
under  His  control)  nor  by  Peter,  neither  at 
Caesarea  Philippi  nor  on  the  Day  of  Pentecost, 
but  when,  after  the  excommunication  of 
Stephen,  the  disciples  found  themselves  ban- 
ished from  the  church  of  the  Jews  and  yet  not 
without  God  or  hope  in  the  world.  It  was 
founded  in  part  by  those  who  upon  that  perse- 
cution went  everywhere  preaching  the  word — 
and  making  a  people  out  of  those  who  had 
never  been  a  people — and  partly  also  by  the 
council  of  the  Jews  who  stoned  Stephen  as  he 
was  calling  upon  God  and  saying,  ^'Lord  Jesus, 
receive  my  spirit!'' 

If  this  be  true,  or  in  the  direction  of  the 
truth,  the  exact  moment  of  the  founding  of  the 
church  cannot  be  marked  off  accurately,  nor  is 
it  important  so  to  mark  it  off.  The  church  was 
an  outgrowth  of  historical  development  and 
came  into  being  through  the  opposition  of 
the  foes  of  Jesus  to  the  claim  of  his  friends  to  a 
place  in  the  church  of  the  Jews  to  which  he  and 
they  had  alike  belonged  and  which  was  un- 
speakably precious  to  them  all.  Stephen  and 
those  who  stoned  him  must  be  regarded  as  the 
most  likely  founders  of  the  Christian  Church. 

These  beginnings  of  the  Christian  Church 
justify  two  considerations.  In  the  first  place, 
neither  Jesus  nor  his  earliest  disciples  were 
separatists.  They  did  not  separate.  They 
were  separated  by  the  authorities  from  the 
church  to  which  they  belonged.     The  love  of 

26 


The  Founding  of  the  Church 

Jesus  for  the  Jewish  Church,  for  its  temple  and 
its  synagogues,  is  apt  in  our  time  to  be  ob- 
scured. He  began  his  public  career  at  Naza- 
reth by  employing  the  opportunity  open  to  Jew- 
ish teachers  in  the  synagogue.  Among  the 
events  which  brought  about  his  death,  his  start- 
ling cleansing  of  the  temple  occupies  a  prom- 
inent place.  To  him  the  Jewish  temple  was  a 
house  of  prayer  for  all  nations,  a  place  where 
all  men  were  to  find  access  to  their  God,  as 
children  in  a  Father's  house,  a  place  wide 
enough  for  him  and  inexpressibly  sacred  to 
him.  He  realized  that  the  Jewish  people 
needed  a  new  conception  of  the  mercy  and  lov- 
ing-kindness of  their  God.  But  there  was  noth- 
ing further  from  his  mind  than  the  proclama- 
tion of  a  new  God  or  the  establishment  of  a 
new  family.  He  appealed  constantly  to  the 
Scriptures  as  an  authority  against  the  newer 
traditions  of  his  time.  He  had  no  wish  to  sep- 
arate from  the  Ten  Commandments  and  from 
the  twenty-third  Psalm.  He  had  only  come  to 
fulfil  the  expectations  of  men  whom  he  regarded 
as  the  very  spokesmen  of  God.  One  of  the 
great  problems  of  New  Testament  study  is  the 
degree  to  which  he  opened  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  to  any  save  Jewish  believers.  The  God 
he  revered  was  the  God  of  his  fathers ;  it  was 
of  that  God  that  he  believed  himself  the  Son. 
We  cannot  of  course  conceive  that  he  believed 
Jews  only  to  have  a  duty  toward  God,  but,  un- 
less our  sources  utterly  deceive  us,  he  believed 

27 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

that  the  highest  duty  men  could  have  was 
toward  the  God  of  the  Jews.  A  Bible  without 
the  New  Testament  is  to  us  an  absurdity;  a 
Bible  without  the  Old  Testament  would  have 
been  to  him  a  blasphemy;  perhaps  we  ought 
to  say  that  any  other  Bible  than  the  Old  Testa- 
ment was  for  him  unthinkable.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  Jesus  was  anything  but  a  dogmatist;  he 
was  not  beginning  religious  history  de  novo; 
the  majestic  utterances  of  the  Jewish  prophets 
were  to  him  a  revelation  of  the  eternal  God. 
Inclusion  and  reverence  were  the  marks  of  his 
religious  temper;  the  fanaticism  and  narrow- 
ness of  come-outers  seem  completely  foreign  to 
his  spirit ;  he  came  to  expand  and  not  to  contract 
the  boundaries  of  the  family  of  God.  I  am  sure 
that  he  would  regard  any  holy  fellowship  as  in- 
complete which  did  not  include  the  sublime 
ethical  monotheists  from  whom  he  sprang. 
What  he  would  have  us  remember  is  that  he 
died  not  by  the  Jews  but  for  them. 

And  the  second  consideration  is  thus:  the 
spirit  of  Jesus  was  much  more  important  to 
our  Lord  than  the  church  of  Jesus.  With  the 
one  he  would  have  identified  himself;  of  the 
other  he  knew  nothing.  If  we  must  choose  be- 
tween the  spirit  of  Jesus  without  a  church  and 
the  church  of  Jesus  without  his  spirit,  we 
will  choose  the  former.  Undue  attention 
to  the  organization  of  the  church  and  to 
its  useful  ceremonies  has  blurred,  distorted, 
almost    erased,    the    spirit    of    Jesus,    which 

28 


The  Founding  of  the  Church 

was  before  the  church  and  is  independent 
of  it.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  history 
has  justified  by  the  stern  law  of  necessity 
the  gathering  and  the  maintenance  of  the 
Christian  Church.  It  embraces  for  us,  as  for 
the  fellow-believers  of  Stephen  and  of  Paul,  all 
people  who  believe  on  God  through  Jesus,  His 
well-beloved  Son,  and  who  through  that  belief 
stand  in  a  peculiar  relation  of  intimacy  with 
Him.  But  no  more  with  us  than  with  Jesus  is 
the  church  the  object  of  our  spiritual  allegi- 
ance; our  supreme  devotion  must,  like  his,  be 
reserved  for  God  and  men.  And  the  ultimate 
purpose  of  our  lives  must  be  not  to  build  up 
a  strong  church  but  to  open  the  human  heart 
through  all  possible  means  to  the  divine  spirit 
of  Jesus. 


29 


LECTURE   II 

THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN 
MINISTRY 


LECTURE   II 

THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN 
MINISTRY 

The  first  great  moment  in  ecclesiastical  his- 
tory, as  we  have  seen,  was  the  establishment 
of  the  church.  The  precise  moment  of  its  es- 
tablishment eluded  us,  but  we  felt  that  we 
could  come  within  a  few  years  of  it.  And  al- 
though the  cause  of  its  establishment  was  not 
exactly  stated  in  the  early  records,  it  seemed 
comparatively  clear  that  it  was  brought  about 
by  the  decision  of  the  leaders  of  the  Jews  not 
to  allow  the  followers  of  Jesus  to  worship  with 
them.  It  was  through  their  expulsion  from  the 
Jewish  Church  that  the  early  disciples  were 
forced  to  believe  that  God  had  gathered  a  new 
church  for  Himself  out  of  those  who  recognized 
the  Messiahship  of  Jesus.  And  when  the  Gen- 
tiles also  accepted  him  they  realized  that  those 
who  were  his  people  were  called  to  be  the 
people  of  God  and  so  to  separate  themselves 
from  all  other  people  of  the  world. 

The  second  great  moment  in  ecclesiastical 
history  was  another  moment  of  separation,  the 
separation  of  the  Christian  clergy  from  the 
laity  of  the  church,  the  origin  of  the  Christian 
ministry  as  a  distinct  class  among  Christian 

33 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

believers,  the  fixing  of  a  deep  gulf  between 
ordinary  and  extraordinary  Christian  disciples. 
We  must  now  try  to  discover  the  origin  of  this 
fateful  distinction  in  the  Christian  church  and 
the  causes  which  produced  it. 

Among  Protestant  scholars,  there  seems 
to  be  little  difference  of  opinion  either  about  the 
beginning  or  the  end  of  this  inquiry  of  ours. 
We  seem  to  know  both  the  starting-point  and 
the  goal  of  that  movement  in  the  Christian 
church  which  produced  a  Christian  hierarchy, 
culminating  in  the  power  and  authority  of  the 
pontifex  maximus,  the  Bishop  of  Rome.  It  is 
about  the  impulses  and  the  stages  of  the  move- 
ment that  sharp  diversity  of  opinion  exists. 
With  the  meager  time  and  limited  scholarship 
at  my  disposal,  it  would  be  futile  for  me  to  at- 
tempt to  trace  the  exact  evolution  of  the  Chris- 
tian bishop,  the  Christian  pastor  with  a  sugges- 
tion of  priest,  the  figure  which  dominates  the 
development  with  which  we  are  to-day  con- 
cerned. It  does  not  seem  to  me  that  the  sources 
which  are  open  to  us  allow  us  to  be  dogmatic 
concerning  it.  I  am  anxious,  simply,  to  dis- 
cover sufficient  grounds  for  the  institution  of 
the  distinction  between  clergymen  and  laymen 
in  the  church,  to  estimate  their  moral  worth,  and 
to  aid  in  deciding  whether  the  distinction  is  of 
Christ  or  of  Anti-Christ. 

The  starting-point  of  this  movement  toward 
the  bishopric  is  made  thoroughly  clear  to  us 
in  PauPs  earlier  letters,  and  particularly  in  his 

34 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Christian  Ministry 

letters  to  the  Corinthians.  In  these  letters  we 
find  the  people  of  Christ  governed  by  the  Holy 
Ghost.  The  important  question  whether  that 
Holy  Ghost  proceeded  from  God  or  from  Christ 
need  not  here  detain  us.  In  any  case,  it  de- 
scended from  above  upon  the  disciples  of  Christ 
and  upon  them  alone.  It  imparted  power  to 
each  but  the  power  was  diverse.  It  was  given 
only  in  part  for  the  individual  who  received  it, 
chiefly  for  the  community  of  which  each  was  a 
citizen.  Every  Christian  was  an  ordained  man 
— ordained  by  divine  power  for  a  divinely  or- 
dered function  of  a  divine  people.  There  was 
no  male  or  female,  no  Greek  or  Jew,  no  bond 
or  free.  The  Spirit  gave  to  each  not  as  each 
would  but  as  He  would.  There  were  no  orders 
and  there  was  not  much  order.  It  cannot  be  said 
that  the  first  beatitude  was  much  in  vogue  in 
the  first  century.  To  be  poor  in  spirit  was  not 
as  common  in  the  Christian  churches  as  to  be 
poor  in  this  world's  goods.  And  I  imagine  that 
we  could  find  no  surer  way  to  understand  why 
this  beatitude  stands  at  the  top  of  the  list  than 
to  be  ushered  into  a  gathering  of  the  primitive 
church.  It  was  not  a  self- governed  body;  it 
was  not  an  ecclesiastically- governed  body;  it 
was  a  spirit-governed  body.  And  it  would  ap- 
pear that  the  gifts  of  the  spirit  ignored  each 
other.  One  would  spring  to  his  feet  in  ecstasy 
in  one  corner  and  another  in  another;  others 
would  feel  suddenly  called  upon  to  interpret 
these  mysterious  shoutings  and  babblings  and 

35 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

contortions  to  their  fellows ;  two  or  three  would 
feel  called  upon  at  once  by  the  Spirit  to  pro- 
claim a  message  from  God  to  men.  In  spite  of 
the  sincerity  and  joy  all  about  them  modern 
men  present  at  such  a  gathering  would  find 
themselves  longing  for  a  poverty  of  the  Spirit. 
But  there  were,  after  all,  definite  marks  of 
order  in  these  gatherings  from  the  first.  To 
begin  with,  each  man  who  became  a  Christian 
was  baptized.  Baptism  and  the  Spirit  could  not 
long  be  separated.  Which  usually  preceded  the 
other  is  not  so  clear  as  that  either  one  led  to 
the  other  or  that  they  were  coincident.  There 
may  have  been  unbaptized  Christians,  but  we 
do  not  hear  of  any.  There  is  no  doubt  that  we 
should  have  regarded  those  who  desired  bap- 
tism after  hearing  the  preaching  of  the  gospel 
by  Paul  as  Christians  before  they  received  it, 
but  there  is  more  doubt  as  to  their  own  feelings 
on  the  matter.  Then  there  was  also  a  meal 
together ;  at  first  this  meal  may  have  been  eaten 
to  appease  hunger,  but  by  the  time  of  Paul 
such  a  motive  was  regarded  as  blasphemous. 
In  Corinth  from  the  very  beginning — and 
Corinth  is  a  fairly  early  church — the  meal  was 
regarded  not  as  a  supper  but  as  a  rite.  Very 
soon,  moreover,  we  hear  of  almsgiving  in  the 
churches.  This  may  have  been  exclusively  a 
matter  between  individuals  at  the  first ;  we  can 
only  say  that  our  earliest  sources  indicate 
that  it  soon  came  to  be  a  church  matter.  Chris- 
tian communities  were  asked  for  gifts  as  com- 

36 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Christian  Ministry 

munities  and  managed  their  gifts  as  communi- 
ties. Now  I  suppose  that  if  we  had  ashed  the 
early  Christians  why  they  baptized  and  cele- 
brated the  supper  of  the  Lord  and  managed 
their  finances  carefully,  they  would  have  attrib- 
uted these  marks  of  order  to  the  Spirit,  but 
whether  they  were  asked  that  question — by 
others  or  themselves — is  not  quite  clear.  Sohm, 
who  seems  sure  that  they  were,  draws  a  picture 
of  the  early  church  which  is  not  impressionistic 
enough  to  be  accurate,  I  think;  the  lines  are 
all  filled  in,  as  though  the  early  Christians  were 
alive  to  the  logical  inferences  that  a  modern 
German  might  draw  from  their  fundamental 
premises.  It  is  certain  that  Paul  believed  that 
the  quiet  ministries  of  Christians  were  gifts  of 
the  spirit,^  but  we  cannot  be  sure  that  he  was 
not  consciously  endeavoring  to  persuade  the 
Corinthians  of  that  fact.  At  Corinth  certainly 
^^spirituaP'  and  *^  ecstatic '^  had  pretty  much 
the  same  connotation;  yet  even  in  impetuous 
and  enthusiastic  Corinth,  there  were  church 
poor  and  therefore  church  finances,  there  was 
crying  need  for  orderly  procedure  in  the  Chris- 
tian gatherings  and  there  were  set  Christian 
rites.  Even  in  Corinth,  therefore,  avenues  of 
development  toward  the  bishopric  were  open. 

But  if  there  were  bishops  in  Corinth,  they 
played  so  small  a  part  that  Paul  does  not  even 
mention  them  or  appeal  to  them  in  a  case  of 
flagrant  immorality  for   which  he   demanded 

1  1  Cor.  12  : 8,  28. 

37 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

church  discipline,  about  25  years  after  Christ's 
death.  We  do  well  to  think  of  the  early 
church  there  as  a  democrac}^  with  the  Spirit 
as  an  extra-constitutional  monarch.  But  only 
six  or  seven  years  later,  we  find  Paul  address- 
ing a  letter  to  ' '  the  church  at  Philippi  with  its 
bishops  and  deacons.''^  Whether  or  not  the 
church  at  Philippi  was  lacking  in  prophets  and 
speakers  with  tongues,  we  cannot  say ;  it  would 
seem  strange  for  a  church  of  that  time  and 
place  in  the  first  years  of  discipleship  to  be 
altogether  without  them;  but  at  Philippi,  at 
any  rate,  in  the  year  56  a.d.  it  was  the  proph- 
ets and  not  the  bishops  that  were  found  un- 
necessary to  mention,  while  the  bishops  were 
singled  out  with  the  deacons  as  the  proper  per- 
sons to  whom  Paul  should  direct  his  letter. 
Thus  early  do  we  find  in  prominent  place  the 
bishops  of  a  Christian  church.  It  is  our  task 
to  find  why  they  rose  to  prominence  and  what 
turned  prominence  into  authoritative  control. 
After  many  years  of  research,  the  leading 
scholars  have  settled  upon  the  three  more  or- 
dered features  of  early  church  life,  to  which  I 
have  already  alluded,  as  marking  out  the  main 
avenues  of  development  from  the  primitive 
Christian  democracy  to  the  authoritative  bishop 
of  the  middle  of  the  third  century.  They  usu- 
ally emphasize  one  of  the  three  at  the  expense 
of  the  others,  but  the  three  leading  avenues 
from  democracy  under  the  Spirit  to  episcopacy 

2  Phil.  1:1. 

38 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Christian  Ministry 

under  Rome  are,  first,  the  care  of  the  church 
finances,  second,  the  moderatorship  of  the 
church  meetings,  and  third,  exclusive  rights  in 
the  Eucharist.  Among  our  modern  scholars 
Hatch  is  the  name  we  associate  with  the  first 
avenue,  Liitgert  with  the  second  and  Sohm  with 
the  third. 

That  the  unexciting  matter  of  church  finances 
played  an  important  part  in  the  early  Chris- 
tian communities  can  scarcely  be  doubted.  The 
first  real  crime  recorded  in  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  as  committed  in  church  circles  is  the 
financial  deceit  of  Ananias  and  Sapphira,  and 
the  love  of  money  it  seems  was  the  root  not 
only  of  the  first  sin  but  also  of  the  first  election 
in  the  church  at  Jerusalem.  Seven  men  had  to 
be  chosen  to  see  that  Greeks  and  Hebrews  ob- 
tained their  proper  shares  of  the  daily  minis- 
tration. The  epochal  conference  in  Jerusalem 
concerning  Gentile  Christianity  seems  to  have 
insisted  that  whereas  the  Jews  had  imparted 
spiritual  goods  to  the  Gentiles,  the  Gentiles 
should  impart  material  goods  to  the  Jews.  In 
the  midst  of  crucial  matters,  personal  and 
moral,  Paul  urged  the  duty  of  this  financial 
contribution  upon  his  Gentile  churches  and  was 
writing  friendly  letters  about  the  messengers 
who  had  been  chosen  to  collect  it.^  Almsgiving 
was  one  of  the  leading  Christian  virtues  as  it 
had  been  one  of  the  leading  Jewish  ones.  ^'The 
Teaching  of  the  Apostles,''  written  at  about 

3  Cf.   2  Cor.   8  :  18-24;    9  :  1-15;    Gnl.   2  :  10;     Rom..    15  :  25-29. 

39 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

the  turn  of  the  first  century,  devotes  its  initial 
chapter  to  this  matter.  And  so  when  Paul  ad- 
dresses his  letter  to  the  Philippians  to  the 
bishops  and  deacons  of  the  church  to  express 
his  thanks  for  the  church's  generous  contribu- 
tion to  his  material  needs  in  prison,  some  say 
that  it  was  because  those  officers  had  gathered 
it.  Furtliermore,  Hatch  presents  evidence — 
perhaps  somewhat  meager  for  quite  so  sweep- 
ing an  assertion — to  prove  ^Hhat  the  officers  of 
administration  and  finance  of  non-Christian 
organizations  of  Asia  Minor  and  Syria  were 
chiefly  known"  either  by  the  title  of  **epime- 
letes''  (caretaker)  or  of  "episcopos"  (over- 
seer).* It  is  clear  that  administrative  officers 
of  municipalities  and  standing  committees  and 
permanent  commissioners  of  government  were 
known  as  episcopoi  '' bishops. ''  And  it  may 
well  be — though  we  can  say  no  more  than  that 
— that  the  title  ^* bishop''  was  introduced  into 
the  early  church  because  the  function  of  its 
bearer  was  administrative  and  financial,  as  it 
was  in  Greek  communities  and  in  the  Septuagint 
usage.  The  financial  status  of  the  early  Chris- 
tians and  the  growing  necessity  for  Christian 
workers  soon  made  the  offering  for  the  poor 
one  of  the  chief  functions  of  Christian  worship. 
In  a  famous  passage  of  his  Apology,  Justin 
Martyr  describes  in  detail  the  collection  of  the 
offerings  of  the  people  at  the  Eucharist  and 

*  Edwin    Hatch:    The   Organization    of   the  Early    Christian    Churches,    pp. 
36-37. 

40 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Christian  Ministry 

their  presentation  to  the  Christian  who  pre- 
sided at  this  feast.^  **The  Teaching  of  the 
Apostles"  advises  the  appointment  of  bishops 
and  deacons  to  perform  the  service  of  lacking 
prophets  and  teachers,  and  as  this  advice  is 
given  just  after  directions  regarding  the  eu- 
charistic  meal,  it  is  fair  to  suppose  that  *^The 
Teaching"  means  these  bishops  and  deacons 
to  preside  over  that  rite  and  to  collect  the  cus- 
tomary offerings  there  made.^  And  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  bishop 
had  control  of  these  offerings  at  the  beginning 
of  the  third  century/ 

All  this  makes  it  very  probable  that  we  are 
following  no  blind  alley  when  we  regard  a 
bishop  as  a  financial  and  administrative 
^^ officer"  of  the  early  Christians.  Finance  is 
certainly  one  of  the  avenues  which  led  from 
democracy  to  episcopacy.  But  important  as 
finance  is,  is  there  anything  in  finance  to  create 
a  sacred  order  of  clergy,  from  which  the  entire 
laity  is  excluded!  Church  Treasurers  are  im- 
portant now  and  they  were  more  important  in 
the  early  days,  but  when  we  think  of  the 
prophets  and  the  teachers,  of  the  apostles  and 
martyrs,  of  the  body  of  elders  from  which  the 
bishops  were  chosen,  and  of  the  administration 
of  the  sacred  rites  of  baptism  and  the  Eucharist, 
it  seems  scarcely  possible  that  church  treas- 
urers should  have  obtained  an  exclusive  right 

5  Apology.    Chapter  67. 

6  Teaching  of  the  Apostles.     Sec.  15. 

''  Cf.  Sohm:    Kirchenrecht,  pp.   70,   75  and  notes. 

41 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

to  appoint  their  own  successors  and  to  domi- 
nate the  life  of  the  churches.  It  is  indeed  true — 
and  I  marvel  that  New  Testament  scholars  have 
not  impressed  us  more  with  its  significance — 
that  even  in  PauPs  time,  the  gifts  of  the  spirit 
seem  to  have  been  regarded  as  given  to  indi- 
vidual Christians  for  their  life-time  or  at  least 
during  their  good  behavior.  The  gift  of 
prophecy  made  the  man  who  received  it  not  a 
mere  recipient  of  the  gift  of  prophecy,  but 
a  prophet;  the  gift  of  teaching  made  a  man  a 
teacher  and  so  on.  It  is,  I  suppose,  possible 
that  the  gift  of  managing  finances  made  a  man 
a  treasurer — a  ^'bishop,''  if  you  please — for 
life,  and  a  bishop  by  divine  appointment.  But 
others  would  have  had  divine  appointment  for 
more  weighty  and  spiritual  duties,  and  the  as- 
sent of  the  whole  church  would  probably  have 
been  necessary  for  the  employment  and  demon- 
stration of  the  gift  of  caring  for  the  church 
moneys.  It  seems,  to  say  the  least,  improbable 
that  the  oversight  of  church  moneys  should 
have  been  the  only  cause  or  even  the  main 
cause  for  the  creation  of  the  Christian  hier- 
archy. 

The  second  avenue  from  spiritual  democracy 
or  theocratic  democracy  to  episcopacy  lies  in 
the  domain  of  public  order.  It  is  perhaps  well 
staked  out  for  us  by  the  title  of  one  of  Profes- 
sor Liitgert's  interesting  monographs:  *^The 
Conflict  of  Office  and  Spirit.''  In  a  series  of  most 

42 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Christian  Ministry 

suggestive  monographs,^  this  Halle  Professor 
has  sought  to  make  clear  that  the  chief  conflict 
in  the  early  church  was  not  between  Christianity 
and  Judaism,  as  we  would  suppose,  but  between 
Christianity  and  a  kind  of  docetic  enthusiasm, 
which  later  became  known  under  the  name  of 
Gnosticism.  It  appears  to  me  that  in  the  light 
of  what  Reitzenstein^  and  others  have  uncov- 
ered to  us  concerning  the  milieu  of  the  early 
church,  the  position  of  Professor  Lutgert  is 
essentially  correct.  When  the  early  Jewish 
Christians,  after  the  death  of  Stephen,  took 
Christianity  into  Asia  Minor,  they  took  it  into 
a  region  where  men  were  seeking  to  escape 
from  the  ills  of  human  flesh  by  escaping  from 
human  flesh  itself.  This  escape  they  made  not 
by  the  avenue  of  death  but  by  the  avenue  of 
religious  rites.  Through  these  mysteries  they 
passed,  as  they  supposed,  from  human  into 
divine  life  and  received  here  on  earth  the 
divine,  deathless,  invisible,  untrammeled  spirit. 
They  treated  the  body  with  the  same  contempt 
which  is  meted  out  to  it  by  the  Christian  Scien- 
tists of  to-day.  Indeed  I  think  we  shall  do  more 
justice  both  to  Christian  Science  and  to  Gnos- 
ticism if  we  remember  that  they  belong  to  the 
same  genus.  But  there  was  this  great  differ- 
ence between  our  case  and  theirs.  The  church 
has  formed  the  atmosphere  into  which  Chris- 

8  Freiheitspredigt  u.  Schwarmgeister  in  Korinth  1908.  Die  Vollkommenen 
in  Philipperbrief  und  die  Enthusiasten  in  Thessalonich  1909.  Die  Irrlehrer 
der    Pastor albriefe   1909. 

9  Die  hellenistischen  Mysterien-Rcligioncn. 

43 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

tian  Science  has  intruded;  the  mystery  re- 
ligions foiTQed  the  atmosphere  into  which 
Christianity  intruded.  What  wonder  if  a  great 
body  of  early  Gentile  disciples,  hearing  Paul's 
earnest  proclamation  of  freedom  from  the  Jew- 
ish law  and  freedom  in  the  Spirit  of  God,  should 
have  regarded  Christianity  as  a  means  of 
bringing  them  into  that  blessed  realm  of  the 
spirit  where  sin  had  no  entrance  and  where 
^^the  resurrection  was  past  already,"  ^^  by  new 
mysterious  rites  and  by  a  more  miracle-work- 
ing spirit  than  any  which  Eg^'pt  or  Persia  could 
produce.  It  is  because  we  no  longer  ignore  the 
world  of  the  first  century  in  our  reading  of  the 
New  Testament  and  the  Apostolic  Fathers  that 
we  see  in  the  condition  of  the  Corinthian 
church,  at  the  time  Paul  wrote  his  letters  to  it, 
a  sort  of  cross-section  of  early  Christianity  as 
a  whole.  This  much  at  least  may  certainly  be 
said.  In  Corinth,  at  about  the  year  50  a.d.,  dis- 
order, due  to  ecstasies  of  the  Spirit,  prevailed 
at  the  gatherings  of  Christians."  The  infalli- 
ble sign  of  Christ's  presence  was  the  gift  of 
tongues,  as  the  event  narrated  in  the  second 
chapter  of  Acts  bears  witness.  At  Philippi, 
about  the  year  58,  there  were  those  who  re- 
garded themselves  as  *  ^  perfect. "  ^-  Xot  so 
much  later,  perhaps,  as  we  have  been  led  to 
believe,  we  hear  in  the  Pastoral  Letters  of  the 
presence  of  those  who  proclaim  that  ^'the  resur- 


"  2  Tim.  2  :  18. 

"  See  particularly  1  Cor.   I  A. 

"  Phil.  3  :  15. 


44 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Christian  Ministry 

rection  is  past  already. ' '  ^^  At  the  turn  of  the 
Century  a  long  section  of  the  Epistle  of 
Clement  might  be  considered  irrelevant,  unless 
the  writer  were  tactfully  appealing  to  those  in 
Corinth  who  disbelieved  the  resurrection,  as 
they  had  disbelieved  it  at  an  earlier  time/* 
Early  in  the  second  century  we  hear  from  the 
*' Teaching  of  the  Apostles''  that  prophets  were 
given  to  having  visions  which  accrued  to  their 
own  material  comfort,  and  from  the  Second 
Letter  of  Peter  that  new-made  converts  were 
seduced  by  those  who  promised  them  liberty 
while  they  themselves  were  slaves  of  cor- 
ruption/^ Ignatius,  at  about  the  same  time, 
in  the  letter  to  the  Trallians,  avers  dis- 
tinctly that  there  are  those  who  affirm 
both  that  they  themselves  are  mere  sem- 
blance and  that  Christ  suffered  in  sem- 
blance only/^  We  have  only  to  mention  the 
words.  Gnosticism,  Montanism,  Marcionism,  to 
call  before  us  the  extent  and  the  longevity  of 
enthusiastic  and  extravagant  movements  in  the 
Christian  church.  Now  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  staid  and  sober  sort  of  people  in  the 
Christian  church  who  from  the  beginning  had 
'^despised  prophecy"  ^^  would  increase  in  the 
face  of  the  extravagances  of  those  who  as  late 
as  the  ^'Teaching  of  the  Apostles"  had  to  be 

13  2  Tim.  2  :  18. 

"  Clement   to  the  Corinthians.     Sec.    24-26. 

16  2  Pet.  2  :  19. 

i«  Ignatius:   Epistle  to  the  Trallians.    Sec.  10. 

V  t  Thess.  6  :  20. 

45 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

cautioned  not  to  despise  bishops/^  The  char- 
acter of  the  time  allows  us  to  have  great  sym- 
pathy with  those  who  opposed  the  Christian 
liberty  which  Paul  proclaimed — and  to  revere 
even  more  deeply  that  great  apostle,  who  in- 
sisted that  that  liberty  was  not  a  liberty  unto 
the  flesh  but  the  liberty  of  the  humble,  minister- 
ing, childlike,  loving  spirit  of  Christ.  As  time 
went  on  the  elders  of  the  community  would 
more  and  more  vigorously  assert  themselves 
against  the  youthful  or  newly  converted  enthu- 
siasts. The  connotation  of  this  word  *^ elder" 
is  not  as  clear  as  we  would  wish,  but  whether 
it  signifies  long  years  of  life  or  long  years  of 
church  membership,  in  either  case  the  influence 
of  the  elders  would  probably  be  cast  on  the  side 
of  order.  If  old  in  years,  they  would  have 
grown  weary  even  of  spiritual  orgies,  if  proud 
of  their  conversion  by  the  apostles  or  of  their 
acquaintance  with  traditions  of  the  church,  they 
would  realize  in  the  esoteric  and  exotic  mys- 
tery-teachings a  departure  from  the  highest 
motives  of  the  best  and  most  substantial  Chris- 
tians. From  this  group  of  elders,  the  bishops 
were  always  taken.  In  Philippi,  at  any  rate, 
and  probably  in  a  very  wide  area  there  were 
several  bishops  in  a  church.  Perhaps  it  was 
simply  another  name  for  elder  at  first ;  it  came 
gradually  however  to  be  applied  to  that  elder 
who  presided  at  the  church  meeting  and  who 
therefore,  as  we  have  seen,  received  the  church 

18  Teaching  of  the  Apostles.     Sec.  15. 

46 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Christian  Ministry 

offerings.  Doubtless  then  as  now  the  older 
men  had  usually  more  to  give  than  the  young 
and  more  wisdom  in  its  distribution.  And  in 
spite  of  the  enthusiasts  there  was  a  reverence 
for  experience  and  age  in  those  days  greater 
than  in  ours.  The  group  of  elders  commonly 
dominated  the  gatherings  of  the  churches  and 
the  older  churches  instinctively  took  the  same 
attitude  of  authority  to  the  newer  churches  that 
the  older  Christians  took  to  the  newer  Chris- 
tians. The  bishops,  then  the  bishop,  gradually 
became  their  spokesman,  the  representative  to 
those  outside  as  well  as  to  those  within,  of 
established  and  ancient  and  orthodox  Chris- 
tianity. Soon  the  bishops  came  to  be  regarded 
as  the  sacred  representatives  of  the  apostles. 
Even  ^'The  Acts  of  the  Apostles '*  informs  us 
that  the  apostles  appointed  elders  in  every 
church' — at  least  about  Lystra,  Iconium  and 
Antioch.^^  Clement  confirms  this,  only  substi- 
tuting bishops  and  deacons  for  elders,  and 
affirms  that  such  appointment  was  prophesied 
by  Isaiah  who  said:  *^I  will  appoint  their 
bishops  in  righteousness  and  their  deacons  in 
faith. ''^^  Eegarding  their  appointment  as  go- 
ing back  thus  pretty  well  to  the  beginning  of 
things  and  as  the  goal  of  the  divine  will,  it 
is  no  wonder  that  he  regarded  the  church 
of  Corinth  as  guilty  of  ^'no  light  sin  for 
thrusting  out  those  who  had  offered  the 
gifts   of  the  bishops'  office  holily.^'     For  we 

19  Acts  14  :  23. 

20  To  the  Corinthians.    Sec.  4^. 

47 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

read  in  his  letter :  '  ^  Our  apostles  knew  through 
the  Lord  that  there  would  be  strife  over  the 
name  of  the  bishop's  office.  For  this  cause, 
therefore,  having  received  complete  foreknowl- 
edge, they  appointed  the  aforesaid  and  after- 
wards they  provided  a  continuance,  that  if 
these  should  fall  asleep,  other  approved  men 
should  succeed  to  their  ministration.  Those 
who  were  appointed  by  them  or  afterwards  by 
men  of  repute  with  the  consent  of  the  whole 
church — these  men  we  consider  to  be  unjustly 
ejected.'' ^^  The  ending  is  somewhat  lame,  it 
is  true,  but  surely  the  passage  prepares  us  for 
the  unblushing  declarations  of  the  great  bishop 
Ignatius  on  his  way  to  martyrdom — of  which 
repeated  declarations  these  samples  must  suf- 
fice. ^^We  ought  to  regard  the  bishop  as  the 
Lord  Himself.  "^^  ^^Be  ye  zealous  to  do  all 
things  in  godly  concord,  the  bishop  presiding 
after  the  likeness  of  God  and  the  presbyters 
after  the  likeness  of  the  council  of  the  apostles 
with  the  deacons  also  who  are  most  dear  to 
me. "  ^^  It  was  only  about  forty  or  fifty  years 
later  that  Irenseus  could  point  to  the  apostolic 
churches  as  sure  repositories  of  Christian  doc- 
trine, because  their  bishops  were  in  direct 
and  continuous  succession  from  the  apostles.  -* 
Curiously  enough  we  have  a  close  parallel  to 
the  apostolic  succession  of  Christian  bishops 

21  To  the  Corinthians.     Sec.  U- 

^^  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians.     Sec.  6. 

^Epistle  to  the  Magnesians.     Sec.  6. 

^^  The   Writings  of  Ircnaeus   {Ante- Nicene  Library),   Vol.    I,    pp.    260-264. 

48 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Christian  Ministry 

in  the  Mosaic  succession  of  Jewish  Rabbis.  In 
the  Midrasch  to  Genesis,  from  about  the  sixth 
century,  we  read  that  Moses  imparted  the  Holy 
Ghost  to  the  Elders  of  Israel  without  lessening 
his  own  supply  and  that  from  that  time  on 
each  teacher  had  lit  his  torch  from  his  prede- 
cessor. Weber  informs  us  from  his  studies  in 
the  Talmud  that  this  lighting  of  the  torch  refers 
to  the  ceremony  of  ordination.  It  is  indeed 
distinctly  said  in  Sanhedrin  14  that  in  the  time 
of  Hadrian  the  last  famous  teacher  had  or- 
dained five  elders  for  the  express  purpose  of 
preserving  the  succession  of  the  Spirit.^^  In 
the  third  century  the  Mechilta  proclaims  that 
to  receive  a  Rabbi  means  to  receive  the  Shekina 
of  God.  And  the  practice  of  the  Jews,  so  thor- 
oughly in  accord  with  this  theory,  is  proof 
enough  that  something  much  akin  to  apostolic 
succession  gave  to  the  Jewish  Rabbi  the  author- 
ity and  standing  of  a  Christian  bishop.  As  the 
theory  was  developed  much  at  the  same  time 
as  that  of  the  apostolic  succession,  it  is  pre- 
sumable that  even  the  Jews  were  not  free  from 
the  extravagant  teachings  of  spirit-filled  enthu- 
siasts and  tliat  Mosaic  succession  like  apostolic 
succession  was  the  refuge  of  the  orthodox.  But 
there  is  one  essential  distinction  between  the 
Jewish  and  the  Christian  situations.  The 
whole  atmosphere  of  late  Judaism  was  legalis- 
tic ;  the  Thora  was  the  authority  and  the  keep- 
ing of  it  the  way  to  salvation.    In  the  Gentile 

"^^  Ferdinand   Weber:    System    der   Altsynagogalen    Paldstinischen   Theologie 
p.  123. 

49 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

Christian  churches,  though  from  the  first  there 
were  always  those  who  regarded  the  Gospel  as 
the  new  law,  Christianity  had  arisen  as  a  life 
given  by  a  risen  Lord,  had  put  down  the  move- 
ment for  all  external  standards,  and  was 
marked  by  a  joy  and  a  vitality  altogether 
foreign  to  the  remnant  of  the  Jews.  Before 
therefore  we  attempt  to  explain  the  authority 
of  the  bishops  from  their  function  as  pre- 
servers of  order,  by  moderating  in  meetings  of 
enthusiasts  and  by  deciding  about  doctrine,  we 
must  turn  to  the  third  avenue  from  democracy 
to  episcopacy  and  examine  the  rights  of  the 
pastor  or  bishop  at  the  Eucharist. 

If  at  any  point  we  long  for  full  records  of 
the  early  church,  it  is  regarding  its  conception 
of  the  Lord's  Supper  and  its  customary  cele- 
bration thereof.  And  nowhere  are  the  records 
so  meager.  It  will  take  us  less  time  than  we 
wish  to  record  the  facts  regarding  the  connec- 
tion of  the  bishop  with  the  Eucharist.  From 
PauPs  counsel  to  the  Corinthians,  ^^  Wherefore, 
my  brethren,  when  ye  come  together  to  eat  (the 
Lord's  Supper),  wait  one  for  another,'' ^^  it  is 
clear  that  no  one  in  particular  was  designated 
to  preside  at  the  feast  and  to  offer  the  thanks- 
giving; various  groups  of  Christians  partook 
at  their  convenience.  At  the  time  of  Justin, 
as  we  have  seen,  there  was  one  who  presided, 
who  received  the  offerings  and  who  later  dis- 
tributed them  to  the  poor.    In  the  Teaching  of 

2«i  Cor.  11  :33. 

50 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Christian  Ministry 

the  Apostles  a  prescribed  prayer  of  thanks- 
giving at  tlie  Eucharist  is  given  in  full  and  then 
we  read:  ^^But  permit  the  prophets  to  offer 
thanksgiving  as  much  as  they  desire. ' '  ^^  And 
Justin  tells  us  that  to  pronounce  the  thanks- 
giving was  the  privilege  of  the  presiding  of- 
ficer. ^^  In  this  same  document,  immediately 
after  the  directions  for  the  Eucharist,  the 
churches  are  counselled  to  elect  bishops  and 
deacons,  and  not  to  despise  them,  for  they  can 
perform  the  service  of  prophets  and  teachers. ^^ 
Ignatius  commands:  Let  that  be  held  a  valid 
Eucharist  which  is  under  the  bishop  or  one  to 
whom  he  shall  have  committed  it.^°  From  that 
time  on  the  language  regarding  the  bishops  be- 
comes more  and  more  priestly  in  tone.  In  the 
Teaching  of  the  Apostles  we  are  told  that  the 
prophets  are  the  chief  priests  of  the  Christian 
and  are  to  receive  the  first-fruits,  and  that  if 
there  be  no  prophets  in  any  church,  the  first- 
fruits  are  to  go  to  the  poor.^^  But  from  the 
time  of  Ignatius,  the  bishops,  who  took  the 
place  of  the  prophets  at  the  Eucharist,  are  more 
and  more  addressed  as  priests  and  given 
control  of  the  alms  of  the  church,  until  we  hear 
Cyprian  speaking  of  the  bishops  constantly  and 
naturally  as  the  priests  of  God.^^     These  are 

27  Teaching    of   the    Apostles.     Sec.    10. 

28  Apology.    Chapter  67. 

29  Teaching    of   the    Apostles.     Sec.    15. 

30  To  the  Smyrnaeans.     Sec.  8. 

31  Teaching  of  the  Apostles.    Sec.   13. 

32  Writings  of  Cyprian  (Ante- Nicene  Library),  Vol.  I,  pp.  120,  164,  ^^6, 
243,  etc.  On  the  whole  subject  cf.  Sohm:  Kirchenrecht,  Vol.  I,  pp.  66-69, 
205-211. 

51 


Some  Turning-points  in  Church  History 

meager  facts,  but  I  think  they  justify  us  in 
saying  that  strong  as  was  the  desire  for  order 
and  unity  in  the  early  church,  and  powerful  as 
was  the  pastor  or  bishop  as  the  official  expres- 
sion of  that  desire,  it  was  only  after  he  had 
obtained  the  exclusive  right  of  presiding  (or 
designating  him  who  should  preside)  at  the 
Eucharist  that  he  became  set  apart  from  his 
brethren  and  by  virtue  of  an  ordination,  in 
which  the  people  had  no  share,  received  the  Holy 
Spirit  for  the  performance  of  an  essentially 
priestly  sacrifice  in  the  Eucharist.  In  the  words 
of  Professor  Allen:  ^^The  separation  between 
clergy  and  laity  (the  authority  for  the  clergy 
coming  from  a  source  external  to  the  people) 
was  deepened  into  an  impassable  barrier  by 
Cyprian's  doctrine  of  the  sacerdotal  character 
of  the  ministry. ' '  ^^ 

If  we  are  right  then  in  coming  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  main  avenue  from  democracy  to 
episcopacy  runs  through  the  eucharist,  and  that 
it  was  because  of  the  function  of  the  bishop  and 
his  associates  here,  that  there  grew  up  a  fatal 
and  irretrievable  class  distinction  in  the  Chris- 
tian church,  it  remains  for  us  to  estimate  the 
Christian  character  of  the  Eucharist,  to  in- 
quire as  to  its  meaning  for  the  early  church, 
and  the  source  or  at  least  the  milieu  from 
which  that  meaning  came.  Here  again  our 
sources  are  meager,  though  somewhat  more 
clear  than  on  the  connection  of  the  bishop  with 

33  Christian  Institutions,  p.  1£4. 

52 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Christian  Ministry 

the  feast.  The  Corinthian  Christians,  appar- 
ently in  harmony  with  other  Gentile  Christians, 
believed  that  the  bread  and  wine  gave  them  the 
same  fellowship  with  the  body  and  blood  of 
Christ  that  their  heathen  contemporaries  in  the 
various  mystery-religions  believed  themselves 
to  possess  with  their  divinities  through  similar 
rites.^*  Paul  himself  undoubtedly  believed  that 
because  the  body  of  Christ,  obtainable  in  the 
sacrament,  had  not  been  properly  reverenced 
and  received,  some  Corinthian  Christians  were 
smitten  with  disease  and  others  with  death.^^ 
Out  of  many  similar  utterances  of  Ignatius  I 
select  these  as  the  clearest  indications  of  his 
belief :  ^ '  Breaking  one  bread,  which  is  the  medi- 
cine of  immortality  and  the  antidote  that  one 
should  not  die  but  live  for  ever  in  Jesus 
Christ. ''^^  **Be  ye  careful  therefore  (for  the 
avoidance  of  schism)  to  observe  one  Eucharist 
for  there  is  one  flesh  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
and  one  cup  of  union  with  his  blood,  there  is  one 
altar,  as  there  is  one  bishop. '  *  ^^  "  They  ab- 
stain from  Eucharist  and  prayer  because  they 
allow  not  that  the  Eucharist  is  the  flesh  of  our 
Saviour,  Jesus  Christ,  which  flesh  suffered  for 
our  sins  and  which  the  Father  of  His  goodness 
raised  up. '  ^  ^^  There  can  therefore  be  but  little 
doubt  that  from  a  very  early  time  in  the  Chris- 
tian church  many  of  the  converts  believed  that 

M  1  Cor.  10  :  14-22. 
3^  Ibid.  11  :S0. 

36  Ephesians  20. 

37  Philadelphians  4. 

38  Smyrnaeans  6. 

53 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

in  partaking  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  they  were 
being  nourished  on  the  transformed  and  immor- 
tal flesh  and  blood  of  Christ. 

Our  final  question  is:  From  whence  came 
this  idea,  final  founder  of  the  Christian  clergy, 
eventual  materializer  of  our  faith? 

In  this  age,  it  is  certainly  unnecessary  to 
show  how  foreign  the  conception  is  to  the 
thought  of  Jesus.  Neither  would  it  have  arisen 
by  a  misunderstanding  of  the  scene  in  the  upper 
room  or  as  a  re-enactment  of  a  passover-feast 
among  men  who  were  constantly  expecting  the 
return  of  their  Lord  from  the  skies.  Whence 
then  did  this  feasting  on  the  immortal  body  of 
Jesus  come  to  muddy  the  transparent  living 
water  of  the  Gospel?  After  what  has  been  said 
regarding  the  prominent  part  played  by  the 
mystery-religions  in  the  atmosphere  of  the 
early  church,  the  answer  is  not  difficult.  In  his 
brochure  on  ^'Baptism  and  the  Eucharist  in  the 
Primitive  Church"  Heitmiiller  has  collected 
certain  interesting  analogies  between  the  Eu- 
charist of  the  Church  and  the  sacred  meals  of 
the  mysteries.  In  these  religious  associations 
he  tells  us  that  common  meals  in  honor  of  the 
god  or  of  the  founder  or  of  a  deceased  patron 
play  a  prominent  part.  Just  as  Paul  speaks 
of  the  table  of  the  Lord,  so  the  devotees  of  the 
heathen  mysteries  speak  of  the  table  of  the 
Lord  Serapis  or  of  the  God  Herakles.  To 
quote:  ^^Men  longed  for  purity  and  pardon,  for 
immortality  and  divine  life  and  for  their  mate- 

54 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Christian  Ministry 

rial  guarantees.  The  mysteries  supplied  them 
in  all  sorts  of  ceremonies.  We  happen  to  know 
of  two  mystery-religions  in  the  very  territory 
of  the  missionary  activity  of  Paul,  which  pro- 
vided sacred  meals  for  their  worshippers.  The 
servants  of  Mithras  celebrated  a  meal  consist- 
ing of  bread  and  a  cup  (in  this  case  of  water) 
which  had  supernatural  effects.  The  similarity 
of  this  meal  with  the  Christian  Eucharist  was 
so  striking  that  Justin  (Martyr)  averred  that 
the  devil  had  contrived  it.  And  similarly  the 
worshippers  of  Attis  recognized  a  holy  meal 
as  the  center  of  their  mysteries.  The  details 
escape  us,  but  it  is  certain  that  in  the  mission- 
ary territory  of  Paul,  particularly  in  Syria  and 
Asia  Minor,  the  belief  in  the  mediation  of 
divine  powers  through  eating  and  drinking  was 
widespread. '^  ^^  The  Lord's  Supper,  as  the 
church  of  the  second  century  understood  it,  was 
one  of  a  genus  that  had  little  in  common  with 
Christianity. 

We  are  forced  then,  are  we  not,  to  this  con- 
clusion, that  the  three  avenues  which  lead  from 
primitive  Christian  democracy  or  theocracy 
to  mediaeval  episcopacy  and  papacy  are  the  con- 
trol of  the  finances,  the  regulation  of  undue  and 
unmoral  ecstasies,  and  the  rights  in  a  peculiarly 
divine  feast.  The  priesthood  of  the  bishop  and 
those  associated  with  him  may  have  been  due, 
in  part,  as  Sohm  believes,  to  the  fact  that  the 

39  Heitmuller:       Taufe   und    AhendmahJ   im     Urchristentum,  v.    78,    cf.    pp. 

esff. 

55 


Some  Turning-points  in  Church  History 

bishop  was  regarded  as  the  steward  of  God, 
because  he  controlled  the  natural  gifts  which 
in  Sohm's  view  were  regarded  as  God's  prop- 
erty and  not  as  the  property  of  the  church.  But 
Sohm  insists  that  that  control  of  God's  prop- 
erty that  was  lodged  in  the  bishop  was  a  con- 
sequence of  his  presiding  over  the  Eucharist.*^ 
The  priesthood  of  the  bishop,  too,  was  undoubt- 
edly prepared  for  by  his  authority  in  putting 
down  the  extravagances  of  those  under  the  con- 
trol of  the  spirit  at  the  church  gathering,  and  of 
his  leadership  against  the  inroads  of  pagan 
mysticism.  But  the  priesthood  of  the  bishop 
was  actually  founded  by  the  mystery  of  the 
Eucharist,  an  institution  transformed  from  its 
original  intent  by  the  atmosphere  of  the  time, 
created  as  that  atmosphere  was  by  the  mys- 
tery-religions, from  which  so  many  of  the  con- 
verts came.  In  other  words  it  is  impossible 
for  us  to  disguise  the  fact  that  just  as  the 
church  was  in  large  part  founded  by  its  perse- 
cutors, so  the  Christian  ministry  was  in  large 
part  established  as  a  clergy  by  the  heathen 
religions  of  the  first  centuries. 

The  basis  of  this  institution  was  not  Chris- 
tian, but  upon  that  basis  has  been  built  one  of 
the  most  splendid  religious  edifices  ever  erected 
in  this  world.  It  culminated  in  the  Papacy  and 
in  the  Holy  Catholic  Church,  with  its  earthly 
capitol  at  Rome.  Before  it,  every  religious 
man  should  bow  with  greatest  reverence.     As 

«o  Kirchenrecht,  Vol.  I,  pp.  66-81. 

56 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Christian  Ministry 

time  went  on  the  bishop  as  the  presiding  officer 
of  an  individual  church,  or  as  we  should  say  a 
pastor,  develoiDcd  into  the  presiding  officer  of 
a  central  church  and  its  outstations,  much  as 
a  missionary  upon  our  foreign  fields  to-day. 
Then  a  bishop  became  a  superintendent  of  a 
diocese  and  eventually,  much  against  Cyprian's 
will,  these  bishops  became  a  regular  hierarchy 
with  archbishops  to  rule  it  and  with  the  Pope 
as  chief  priest  above  all.  This  hierarchy  re- 
tained supervision  over  the  finances  of  the 
churches  and  soon  there  came  to  be  a  genuine 
Catholic  treasury  or  at  least  a  Catholic  control. 
Much  more  important,  however,  than  any  mat- 
ter of  finance,  these  bishops  retained  their 
rights  in  the  sacrament.  Over  it  they  presided 
or  ordained  those  who  should  represent  them  at 
that  solemn  and  life-giving  sacrifice.  There 
came  thus  to  be  a  vast  spiritual  organization 
of  the  civilized  world.  It  incarnated  the  great 
idea  of  a  supreme  spiritual  fellowship  which 
spanned  all  national  divisions  and  which  made 
men  realize  a  common  human  life.  The  word 
humanity  for  the  first  time  sprang  into  sight 
of  men  on  a  large  scale.  It  deepened  and  sanc- 
tified every  individual  life,  for  each  was  a  citi- 
zen of  a  vast  City  of  God.  And  this  human  life 
common  to  all  was  no  earthly  life.  It  was  an 
immortal  one.  And  to  the  immortal  element, 
all  that  was  of  this  world  was  subsidiary.  The 
Holy  Catholic  Church  fixed  the  eyes  of  men 
upon  their  spiritual  being.     To  it  was  com- 

57 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

mitted  an  eternal  food  which  it  could  impart  to 
all  men  and  women  and  children,  assuring  them 
of  immortal  bliss  but  also  bestowing  upon  them 
in  this  present  world  an  immortal  flesh  which 
should  gradually  transform  their  own.  Every- 
where men  were  in  touch  with  God.  Every  day 
His  power  could  break  forth  through  them  into 
miraculous  announcements  of  His  presence  and 
favor.  No  electric  cars  were  built  nor  super- 
dreadnoughts,  neither  was  sanitation  or  sur- 
gery in  the  foreground  of  men's  attention.  But 
generations  of  men  were  produced  which  have 
made  it  impossible  for  the  generations  that 
have  followed  and  that  will  follow  to  regard 
themselves  as  animals  and  which  have  given 
men  those  motives  and  impulses  which  alone 
assure  progress  and  vitality.  And  in  this  great 
spiritual  fellowship,  the  men  of  the  spirit,  the 
magicians  of  the  spirit  if  you  choose,  were  the 
rulers  and  leaders.  Monarchs  and  courts  were 
their  servants,  raised  up  to  do  the  lower  work 
of  the  world,  and  utterly  under  their  hands  to 
bless  or  to  ruin.  The  secular  was  subordinate 
to  the  spiritual,  trade  to  religion.  Never  before 
and  never  since,  until  the  Anabaptists  rose  in 
Zurich  or  perhaps  not  until  the  Mayflower 
sailed  for  Plymouth  or  perhaps  never  at  all, 
has  a  greater  ecclesiastical  idea  dominated  the 
minds  of  men.  For  if  this  be  indeed  a  spiritual 
life  which  we  lead  together,  the  spiritual  must 
manifestly  and  admittedly  and  universally 
have  charge  of  the  material.     The  men  who 

58 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Christian  Ministry 

best  embody  religion  must  control,  though  they 
need  not  manage,  the  affairs  of  men.  And  all 
this  vast  empire  of  the  soul  the  Holy  Catholic 
Church  symbolized  and  in  a  large  measure  in- 
carnated. With  what  it  deemed  a  historical 
and  with  what  was  an  unquestioned  right,  it 
stood  as  the  representative  of  God  in  the  world. 
It  dimly  pointed  to  a  mysterious  but  historic 
Christ,  who  had  showed  that  the  earthly  life 
was  only  the  transparent  shell  of  the  divine; 
it  covered  him  up  by  his  miraculous  birth  and 
by  his  cross,  but  those  were  better  coverings 
than  trappings  of  luxury  and  lust.  It  united 
and  organized  and  spiritualized  mankind. 
What  wonder  that  it  still  lives  to-day!  What 
wonder  that  it  looks  do^vn  upon  sects  and 
despises  less  catholic  and  less  venerable  priest- 
hoods and  liturgies!  What  wonder  that  from 
the  throne  of  its  high  accomplishments,  its  un- 
dying zeal  and  its  truly  Catholic  hope,  it 
despises  Anglican  orders  and  exterminates 
Modernism  as  a  doctor  cuts  out  a  mole!  It 
lives  because  it  embodies  in  the  most  visible 
and  affecting  form  the  supremacy  of  religion 
over  animalism,  and  the  universal  and  immor- 
tal fellowship  of  men.  It  insists  upon  and  it 
visualizes  the  authority  of  conscience  and  God ; 
it  directs  the  ignorant;  it  holds  all  men  to- 
gether. No  religious  man  should  stand  aloof 
from  its  mighty  history,  its  transcendent  hopes, 
its  vast  and  permanent  achievements.  Like 
much  other  religion  in  the  world,  it  is  not  Chris- 

59 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

tian;  it  must  therefore  be  transformed  and 
purified.  But  only  when  Christianity  becomes 
as  vast  and  purer,  only  when  men  live  by  the 
passion  of  Jesus  as  Catholics  have  lived  by  the 
passion  for  immortal  life,  only  when  Christian- 
ity rules  our  individual  spirits  and  a  multitude 
of  individual  spirits,  as  the  Roman  Church 
ruled  the  early  centuries,  will  Jesus  see  of  the 
travail  of  his  soul  and  be  satisfied. 


60  ] 


LECTURE   III 

THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  NATIONAL 
CHUECHES 


LECTURE    III 

THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  NATIONAL 
CHURCHES 

The  great  ideal  which  erected  the  papacy 
held  Western  Europe  in  a  spiritual  fellowship, 
almost  unbroken,  for  centuries.  Even  an  ex- 
treme Protestant  must  be  awed  by  its  strength, 
its  fine  accomplishment  and  its  vaster  promise. 
In  so  vast  a  fabric,  he  feels  inclined  to  think 
that  room  for  the  diversest  growth  of  individ- 
ualism might  have  been  found.  Its  fall  seems 
even  to  him  a  calamity  and  the  cause  of  wide- 
spread disaster  and  confusion.  The  unity  of 
Western  civilization  was  endangered;  for  what 
was  believed  to  be  Christendom  the  nation  was 
substituted  as  object  of  allegiance  and  pro- 
tector of  rights.  While  through  the  fall  of  the 
Papacy,  religious  thought  became  freer,  re- 
ligion itself  from  being  regarded  as  the  mis- 
tress of  the  world  became  the  arm  of  the  state. 
The  price  we  paid  for  the  freedom  of  the  mind 
was  the  secularisation  not  only  of  the  State  but 
of  the  Church. 

It  is  our  present  task  to  trace  the  rise  of 
what  seems  to  me  the  most  inadequate  of  all 
the  historical  forms  of  church  organization, 
the  church  of  a  delimited  nation. 

(53 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

I  desire,  perhaps  somewhat  arbitrarily,  to 
limit  my  subject.  I  do  not  think  that  the  Roman 
Catholic  or  Greek  Catholic  churches  properly 
fall  under  the  caption  of  National  Churches. 
That  they  were  in  official  relation  with  the  State 
is  undeniable,  but  the  State  with  which  they 
were  related  was  not  delimited ;  ideally  and  dog- 
matically speaking,  the  State  was  Catholic  in 
character  and  made  some  pretension  at  being 
world-wide  in  its  scope.  We  are  not  consider- 
ing the  principle  of  Establishment,  per  se,  but 
of  a  limited  national  establishment.  But  I  also 
desire  to  exclude  from  consideration  the  an- 
cient Eastern  Churches,  both  because  their  his- 
tory would  take  us  far  afield  from  our  own 
immediate  interests  and  also  because  these 
churches  did  not  definitely  fall  away  from  a 
universal  church  for  the  sake  of  establishing 
a  narrow,  national  organization.  The  Arme- 
nian Church  existed  as  a  national  church  from 
its  inception  and  other  eastern  churches  arose 
on  doctrinal  grounds,  becoming  national  only 
incidentally  and  perhaps  somewhat  gradually. 
What  I  desire  to  consider  is  the  formation  of 
Protestant  churches  which  consciously  split 
off  from  a  larger  whole  and  which  took  shape 
according  to  the  boundaries  of  their  civil 
governments. 

We  Americans  have  never  been  conscious  of 
much  exaggeration  in  Longfellow's  familiar 
lines  upon  our  country: 

64 


The  Beginnings  of  the  National  Churches 

"  Humanity  with  all  its  fears, 
Vv^ith  all  the  hopes  of  future  years, 
Is  hanging  breathless  on  thy  fate! 
Our  hearts,  our  hopes  are  all  with  thee, 
Our  hearts,  our  hopes,  our  prayers,  our  tears, 
Our  faith  triumphant  o'er  our  fears, 
Are  all  with  thee,  are  all  with  thee !  " 

But  surely  if  there  was  ever  a  human  insti- 
tution to  which  without  apparent  blasphemy 
these  words  could  be  addressed  it  was  the  Holy 
Catholic  Church  of  the  West  with  its  high  tra- 
ditions, its  glorious  cathedrals,  its  rich  litera- 
ture, its  sacred  liturgy,  its  noble  saints,  its 
effective  and  proven  organization.  Only  a 
combination  of  the  strongest  causes  could  have 
produced  its  fall.  Only  in  an  upheaval  of 
Christian  civilization  could  the  most  precious 
structure  of  the  ages  perish.  In  the  time  at 
our  disposal  it  is  possible  only  to  mention  in 
the  briefest  fashion  four  great  grounds  of  its 
fall. 

The  first,  of  course,  is  the  manifest  disloyalty 
of  the  leaders  of  the  Church  to  their  sublime 
ideal.  The  ideal  was  too  large  for  men  to  sup- 
port. The  Popes  instead  of  seeking  to  serve 
the  Ideal  sought  to  make  the  Ideal  serve  the 
most  narrow  and  trivial  of  interests.  More 
compelling  than  the  sublimity  of  their  vast 
Ideal  was  the  affection  that  bound  them  to 
their  kin,  the  lust  that  drew  them  to  their  for- 
bidden offspring,  the  love  of  luxury  that  sub- 
stituted  splendor  for  purity.     In   support  of 

65 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

this  assertion  we  have  only  time  to  cite  a  ver}^ 
few  instances  from  the  long  catalogue  which 
Henry  C.  Lea  has  so  laboriously  gathered. 
Sixtus  IV  bestowed  upon  a  nephew  of  his  not 
only  an  archbishopric  but  at  the  same  time 
seven  bishoprics  and  two  abbacies.  To  another 
nephew,  a  Cardinal  and  a  libertine,  he  gave 
a  group  of  bishoprics  yielding  60,000  ducats 
a  year  (the  actual  value  of  the  gold  m  the 
coin  being  over  $125,000).  He  pawned  his 
sacred  tiara  for  gold  and  redeemed  it  by  creat- 
ing 18  new  secretaries,  and  forcing  each  one  to 
pay  him  2,600  florins.  Leo  X,  Luther's  Pope, 
appointed  60  chamberlains  from  whom  he  ex- 
acted in  payment  for  their  offices  74,000  ducats. 
The  holder  of  every  benefice  throughout  Eu- 
rope was  forced  to  return  a  stipulated  sum  to 
the  Pope  who,  for  ease  of  collection,  employed 
the  Fugger  banking  house  at  Augsburg  for  50 
per  cent,  of  the  total.  Confessors  in  the  Hos- 
pital of  San  Giovanni  on  almost  indisputable 
authority  are  said  to  have  notified  the  physi- 
cians of  the  wealth  of  their  various  patients, 
the  richest  of  whom  were  systematically  pois- 
oned. Innocent  VIII  and  Alexander  VI  gave 
public  weddings  for  their  o^vn  illegitimate 
daughters.  Concubinage  of  the  priests  was 
quite  universal.  Large  sums  of  money  for 
crusades  against  the  infidel,  purchased  by  the 
sale  of  indulgences,  which  guaranteed  freedom 
from  criminal  prosecution  here  as  well  as  from 
purgatorial  pains  hereafter,  were  applied  to 

66 


The  Beginnings  of  the  National  Churches 

current  expenses  of  the  Papal  court  and  the 
aggrandizement  of  the  Papal  families.  It  is 
not  strange  that  nepotism,  the  form  of  family 
enrichment  which  is  most  in  favor  with  sup- 
posedly childless  clergy,  has  become  the  best 
known  word  to  describe  the  most  shameless 
graft.  But  we  must  take  only  so  much  further 
time  as  is  necessary  to  outline  the  career  of 
the  son  of  Eene  II,  Duke  of  Lorraine.  At  three 
years  of  age,  he  was  appointed  coadjutor  to  his 
uncle,  the  Bishop  of  Metz.  At  ten  years  of  age 
he  succeeded  to  the  bishopric.  He  resigned  it 
after  a  while  in  favor  of  his  own  nephew,  aged 
four.  At  nineteen,  he  became  also  Bishop  of 
Toul  and  at  twenty  Bishop  of  Terouanne  also 
and  Cardinal  by  grace  of  the  Pope.  In  the  next 
five  years  he  added  three  more  bishoprics,  in- 
cluding that  of  Verdun.  His  avarice  still  un- 
satisfied, he  became  Archbishop  of  Narbonne, 
Eeims  and  Lyons  without  resigning  any  of  his 
bishoprics.  Truly  catholic  in  his  tastes,  he 
added  thirteen  abbeys  to  his  rule.  His  ex- 
travagances throughout  life  were  so  great  that 
notwithstanding  his  large  income  he  was  al- 
ways poor.'  When  we  consider  that  these  vari- 
ous offices  assigned  to  papal  favorites  were 
often  farmed  out  to  the  highest  bidder,  who  in 
his  turn  auctioned  off  his  pile  of  sacred  offices, 
we  can  understand  how  to  the  people  who  paid 
dear  for  heartless  services  the  Church  began 

1  For    these    and    similar    facts,     cf.    Cambridge    Modern    History,    Vol.    I. 
Chapter  XIX. 

G7 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

to  be  the  exploiter  instead  of  the  sanctifier  of 
the  religious  life  of  men,  a  splendid  burden 
instead  of  a  liberator  and  savior.  Had  the 
Church  insisted  upon  being  the  friend  of  men, 
I  do  not,  for  one,  believe  that  the  Christian 
Revolution  would  have  been  possible. 

The  second,  though  quite  subordinate,  cause 
of  the  fall  of  the  Catholic  Church  was  that  large 
movement  for  the  advancement  of  the  human 
intellect  and  for  the  release  of  the  spontaneity 
of  the  human  heart  that  the  word  Renaissance 
is  employed  to  cover.  Its  center  was,  of  course, 
the  discovery  of  the  classics  of  the  Greeks  and 
Romans.  Here,  before  the  Church  or  its  Lord 
had  ever  worked  upon  the  hearts  of  men,  there 
was  unexpectedly  exhibited  to  the  world,  that 
had  begun  to  feel  the  bondage  of  the  church,  a 
pure  delight  in  nature  and  in  the  development 
of  human  character  and  of  human  society  that 
was  astounding.  The  high  ideals  of  the  human 
mind  in  Plato  and  Virgil  and  Cicero  and  Seneca 
and  the  joy  and  nobility  of  heart  that  their 
writings  evinced,  the  largeness  and  childlike- 
ness  of  Homer,  the  glimpses  at  the  beauty  and 
charm  of  the  antique  world,  all  made  the  per- 
haps unacknowledged  appeal  of  a  freer,  glad- 
der day  to  men  suddenly  aware  of  living  in 
prison.  The  leaders  of  the  Church  and  of  the 
Universities  abandoned  themselves  almost 
without  reserve  to  the  earthly  Paradise  of 
which  they  seemed  to  catch  a  first  vision  and 
men  began  to  be  bound  together  on  high  levels 

68 


The  Beginnings  of  the  National  Churches 

of  feeling  by  ties  which  had  absolutely  no  con- 
nection with  Christ  or  the  Church.  The  life 
thus  revealed  seemed  more  full  of  promise  and 
delight  than  any  which  their  religion  had  ever 
offered  them.  Human  nature  did  not  seem  as 
evil  as  the  Church  had  found  it  or  perchance 
even  had  maintained  it.  It  could  be  trusted 
as  well  as  the  divine  instruction  of  the  priest; 
it  needed  expansion  more  than  redemption. 
With  the  discovery  of  the  Classics  went  also  the 
discovery  of  the  Early  Fathers  and  the  in- 
evitable conviction  spread  abroad  that  the 
church  of  the  primitive  days  and  the  majestic 
and  debauched  institution  of  their  time  had 
but  very  little  in  common.  In  the  famous  anony- 
mous dialogue  of  Peter  and  Pope  Julius,  the 
Pope  is  represented  as  shuddering  at  the  very 
thought  of  being  ^^  reduced  to  the  level  of  the 
Apostles.''^  The  freedom  of  the  intellectual 
air  and  the  dawning  perception  of  the  worth 
of  an  individual  human  being,  made  men 
wonder  if  the  Church  were  a  refuge  or  a 
prison,  the  guide  or  the  seducer  of  the  spirit. 
Mere  distrust  of  the  Church,  however,  would 
not  have  produced  her  ruin.  She  stood  for  too 
vital  an  element  in  human  life  for  that.  Match- 
ing these  two  negative  influences  there  were  at 
least  two  constructive  forces  at  work  which 
assured  her  terrible  chastisement.  The  first 
of  these,  of  course,  was  the  individual  religious 
experience  of  Martin  Luther. 

^Froude:    Life,  and  Letters  of  Erasmus,  p.  168. 

69 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

Into  this  sublime  event  in  the  history  of  man- 
kind it  is  neither  possible  nor  necessary  to 
enter.  At  nearly  every  one  of  the  vital  turning- 
points  in  the  organization  of  the  Church,  there 
stands  a  personal  revelation  of  God.  Behind 
the  founding  of  the  Church  stands  the  experi- 
ence of  Jesus  with  God;  with  the  deliberate 
freeing  of  the  Church  from  racial  limitations 
there  stands  connected  the  experience  of  Paul 
with  God ;  sanctifying  the  arrogance  of  the  bish- 
opric stands  the  experience  of  Ignatius  with 
God  and  with  death ;  as  a  commentary  upon  the 
rise  of  Catholicism  there  stands  the  experience 
of  Augustine  with  God,  and  behind  its  fall,  the 
experience  of  Luther  with  God.  I  do  not  mean 
that  these  personal  experiences  were  equally 
determinative  of  the  outer  movements  of  the 
church;  but  the  personal  character  of  our  re- 
ligion manifests  itself  in  the  fact  that  at  these 
vast  turns  in  its  historical  course  we  find  the 
supporting  strength  of  the  revelation  of  God  in 
the  soul  of  an  individual  man.  Of  all  these  per- 
sonal experiences,  the  experience  of  Luther  was 
most  patently  and  immediately  determinative 
of  a  change  in  the  organization  of  religion.  The 
experience  of  Jesus,  as  we  have  seen,  though, 
of  course,  standing  behind  the  founding  of  the 
Church,  stood  a  good  distance  behind  it;  the 
experience  of  Paul  occurred  after  the  first  steps 
in  the  formation  of  a  Church,  untrammeled  by 
the  Jewish  State;  the  experience  of  Augustine 
also  was  a  reinforcement  of  a  movement  al- 

70 


The  Beginnings  of  the  National  Churches 

ready  under  way,  though  a  reinforcement  of 
determinative  power;  but  the  experience  of 
Luther  was  at  once  translated  into  the  sphere 
of  Church  organization  by  Luther  himself. 
The  experience  of  God  in  his  own  soul  was  to 
him  so  authoritative  and  unquestionable  and 
satisfying,  that  it  was  impossible  to  modify  or 
obscure  or  support  it  by  the  holiest  traditions 
of  the  Church.  What  the  Church  was  in  the 
world  to  do  for  men,  God  had  done  for  him  in 
the  church  but  apart  from  its  supposedly  indis- 
pensable organization.  He  believed  that  his 
experience  of  God  was  in  harmony  with  these 
other  personal  revelations  of  God  to  which  I 
have  referred,  but  there  was  nothing  about  any 
of  them  that  depended  upon  the  consent  of  the 
Eoman  Catholic  or  Greek  Catholic  Churches; 
the  church  organization  could  not  therefore  be 
regarded  as  essential  to  the  revelation  of  God 
in  the  soul  of  man  and  the  redemption  of  man 
by  the  Spirit  of  God.  ^^What,"  he  says,  *4s 
the  entire  gospel  other  than  the  good  tidings 
of  the  forgiveness  of  sins?  .  .  .  Neither  the 
Pope  nor  Bishop  nor  any  man  has  the  right  to 
command  a  Christian  even  by  a  syllable  with- 
out his  consent. ' '  ^  After  his  experience  with 
God,  he  knew  how  divine  a  thing  a  Christian 
was.  It  was  to  him  a  blasphemy  that  any  one 
who,  through  the  will  of  God,  had  obtained  the 
freedom  of  a   Christian  should  be  controlled 


2  Von    der    Babvlonische7i  Gefangenschaft    der    Kirche.     See    Rade's  Luther, 
Vol.  I,   pp.  689,  692. 

71 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

even  by  so  holy  an  institution  as  the  Churcli. 
A  man  who,  free  from  sin  and  care  and  death, 
could  commune  with  God  as  a  child  with  a 
father,  had  escaped  from  the  Babylonish  Cap- 
tivity of  Rome.  When  Luther  summarized  the 
two  parts  of  the  gladdest  Christian  book  ever 
written  thus:  *'A  Christian  is  an  absolutely 
free  lord  of  all  things  and  subject  to  no  man. 
A  Christian  is  an  absolutely  bounden  servant 
of  all  things  and  subject  to  every  man,"*  he 
laid  grounds  deep  enough  and  revolutionary 
enough  to  make  inevitable  the  establishment 
of  a  new  Christian  fellowship  in  the  world.  If 
any  human  words  are  worthy  to  be  set  along- 
side of  the  two  commandments  of  Jesus,  those 
words  of  Luther  must  be  chosen.  What  God 
wrought  in  the  soul  of  a  miner's  son  rent  the 
Christian  Church  in  twain  and  made  inevitable 
the  freedom  and  fellowship  in  which  we  stand. 

By  no  means  so  important  as  this  experience 
of  Martin  Luther  with  God,  but  more  deter- 
minative of  the  form  of  the  organization  which 
this  experience  produced  than  the  experience 
itself,  was  the  last  of  the  four  causes  of  the 
Papacy's  fall.  It  is  the  most  important  for 
our  purpose  and  therefore  upon  it  we  must  now 
concentrate  our  attention ;  I  refer  to  the  growth 
of  national  consciousness. 

Even  the  noble  ideal  of  the  Papacy  had  never 
been  able  to  repress  the  consciousness  of  dif- 

*  Von  der  Freiheit   eines   Christenmenschen.     See  Rade's  Luther,  Vol.  I,  p. 
721. 

72 


The  Beginnings  of  the  National  Churches 

ference  of  racial  temperament,  racial  needs  and 
racial  aspirations  in  its  wide  domain.  Schism 
was  always  dreaded  and  often  met  by  it.  And 
yet  at  times  it  seemed  as  if  the  world  were  but 
a  body  for  the  Roman  soul.  The  Latin  lan- 
guage became  the  universal  language  of  schol- 
arship, of  inter-communication  between  all 
classes  of  divers  races,  of  worship.  Men  really 
began  to  do  their  thinking  in  a  medium  which 
required  no  translation;  it  looked  as  if  the 
world  of  thought  were  really  to  be  one.  Peas- 
ants everywhere  began  to  be  accustomed  to  its 
sound  in  worship  and  to  regard  it  as  the  lan- 
guage of  devotion  and  of  the  angels.  Their 
rulers  used  the  language  and  relied  upon  the 
authority  of  Rome.  These  rulers  were  not 
kings  but  satraps ;  they  each  kept  order  for  the 
viceregent  of  Christ  and  for  the  strengthening 
of  His  kingdom  against  the  infidels.  Usually 
they  ruled  only  over  small  areas,  lived  without 
pomp,  and  divided  their  time  pretty  equally 
between  the  chase  of  beasts  and  the  repression 
of  brigands.  Everywhere  the  presence  of  the 
priest  told  of  a  higher  power  and  often  the 
presence  of  monks  that  of  greater  luxury.  Eu- 
rope seemed  indeed  to  be,  if  not  a  common- 
wealth of  man,  at  least  a  federation  of  the 
world.  Rome,  as  a  court  of  last  resort,  ante- 
dates the  Hague  Tribunal.  It  promulgated  de- 
cisions, even  if  they  were  but  rarely  enforced. 

But  gradually  this  state  of  affairs  became 
threatened  by  clashing  interests  of  large  num- 

73 


Some  Turning-points  in  Church  History 

bers  of  people.  Loyalties  arose  which  came 
into  conflict  with  the  loyalty  to  the  head  of  the 
Church.  The  growth  of  a  kind  of  dawning 
nationalism  is  hard  to  trace;  there  is  appar- 
ently no  adequate  treatment  of  this  subject  ex- 
tant; we  must  simply  indicate  some  factors  in 
its  rise. 

And  certainly  a  most  important  factor  in  the 
growth  of  national  consciousness  is  the  enlarg- 
ing of  the  areas  of  secular  control.  In  order 
to  keep  the  peace,  the  knights  or  barons  of  a 
neighborhood  combined  together.  After  a  long 
time,  there  came  to  be  a  federation  or  confed- 
eration or  principality  or  kingdom  in  place  of 
a  smaller  unit  of  territory.  Or  an  elected  king 
would  really  make  his  power  felt  in  the  terri- 
tory over  which  he  held  only  theoretic  rights 
before.  Then  the  prince  or  king  would  become 
a  sufficiently  great  figure  to  appeal  to  the  imag- 
inations of  men,  and  he  would  deliberately  em- 
phasize the  peculiar  need  of  his  own  territory 
over  against  the  interests  of  territories  near  by 
and  over  against  the  advantage  of  Christendom 
as  a  whole.  The  Pope  began  to  be  regarded  in 
Germany  and  England  and  even  in  France  not 
as  the  Father  of  the  people  but  as  a  foreign 
monarch,  ruling  over  a  distant  realm  and  intent 
on  the  interests  of  the  region  near  his  papal 
seat.  The  Bishops  seemed  much  more  con- 
cerned with  their  own  personal  standing  at 
Eome  than  with  the  condition  of  their  own 
peoples.    The  prince,  at  least,  strengthened  the 

74 


The  Beginnings  of  the  National  Churches 

section  over  which  he  ruled  and  expended  his 
wealth  among  his  own  people;  the  bishop  for- 
warded the  taxes  of  the  church  in  great  part 
to  Eome  and  frowned  upon  the  growing  feel- 
ing of  independence  among  the  subjects  and  at 
the  court  of  great  princes.  The  common  man 
began  to  feel  that  his  interests  were  not  identi- 
cal with  the  interests  of  Christendom  and  that 
his  interests  must  first  be  met.  The  ideal  of 
the  Papacy  was  too  vast  and  vague  for  men; 
though  still  far  from  even  dreaming  of  HegePs 
conception  of  the  National  State  as  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  upon  earth,  they  began  to  feel 
that  the  needs  of  localities  differed  and  that 
the  needs  must  be  met  by  the  people  of  the 
localities  themselves. 

The  rise  of  the  Mohammedan  power  and  its 
conquest  of  Constantinople  and  the  discovery 
of  America  and  its  colonization  served  to  em- 
phasize the  divergent  interests  and  powers  of 
the  nations  and  to  destroy  that  unity  of  feeling 
upon  which,  and  out  of  which,  the  Papacy  grew. 
Roughly  speaking,  the  statement  of  Drury  may 
be  accepted  as  true:  ^^ Europe  was  no  longer 
capable  of  uniting,  as  at  the  eleventh  century, 
in  one  great  religious  thought,  nor  was  she  yet 
in  condition  to  act  in  concert  for  a  grand  politi- 
cal idea.  At  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century 
there  was  not  a  single  general  question  which 
could  rally  all  the  governments ;  there  was  not 
even  any  great  force  to  rally  the  peoples  about 
a  principle.    However  this  force  existed  and  in 

75 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

France,  always  the  vanguard  of  Europe,  it  was 
already  acting.  It  was  royalty  which  was  to 
draw  each  state  from  feudal  chaos,  to  secure 
internal  order,  to  prepare  equality,  and  through 
the  encouragement  given  to  commerce,  manu- 
factures, letters  and  arts,  to  aid  in  the  develop- 
ment of  a  new  civilization. ' '  ^  If  we  take 
^'royalty''  in  a  broad  sense,  to  include  the  sov- 
ereignty of  cities  in  Switzerland  and  of  princi- 
palities in  Germany,  reinforced  by  the  ideal  of 
the  Empire,  the  statement  may  stand  at  about 
its  face  value.  The  secular  power  grew  in 
extent  and  in  its  appeal  to  the  imagination;  it 
became  virtually  coincident  with  the  conception 
of  a  nation;  it  was  helped  by  the  furtherance 
of  literatures  in  the  languages  of  the  peoples ; 
out  of  the  anarchy,  which  the  weakening  of  the 
Papacy  left,  grew  the  compact  and  fighting 
nations.  It  was  just  as  this  national  conscious- 
ness was  forming  that  Luther  had  that  personal 
experience  with  God  out  of  which  grew  the 
great  Protestant  revolution  in  religion. 

It  now  becomes  our  duty  to  show,  if  we  may, 
how  the  freedom  of  the  Christian  man,  which 
Luther  experienced  and  for  which  he  so  greatly 
suffered  and  contended,  became  the  means  by 
which  the  Church,  once  the  acknowledged  queen 
of  the  state,  became  its  humble  subject. 

For  this  sorry  plight,  Luther  himself  cannot 
be  altogether  acquitted  of  blame.  He  had  no 
desire  that  the  freedom  of  the  Christian  man 

5  History  of  Modern  Times  {Grosvenor's  edition),   p.   7. 

76 


The  Beginnings  of  the  National  Churches 

should  weaken  the  authority  of  the  Christian 
prince.  National  impulses  mixed  themselves 
with  purely  religious  ones  in  Luther's  mind, 
from  the  beginning.  The  same  year  which  saw 
the  publication  of  ' '  The  Freedom  of  the  Chris- 
tian Man''  and  ^^The  Babylonish  Captivity  of 
the  Church"  saw  also  his  address  to  the  Ger- 
man Nobility  summoning  them  to  come  to  the 
aid  of  the  captive  Church.  In  that  famous 
appeal  occur  many  words  of  a  distinctly  patri- 
otic brand,  like  these :  ' '  Now  that  the  cardinals 
have  sucked  Wales  dry,  they  enter  German  ter- 
ritory. They  begin  most  politely  but,  observe, 
German  land  will  soon  be  like  the  Welsh.  We 
already  have  some  cardinals ;  what  the  Eomans 
are  after  they  think  that  the  drunken  Germans 
will  not  understand,  until  they  have  no  bish- 
opric, monastery,  manse,  heller  or  pfennig 
left ;  the  mad  gluttons  of  Germans  must  stand 
it.  Some  people  believe  that  more  than  three 
hundred  thousand  gulden  leave  Germany  every 
year  for  Rome  in  vain,  for  which  we  get  nothing 
but  scorn  and  mocking.  We  keep  wondering 
why  our  princes,  our  nobles,  our  cities  and  in- 
stitutions, our  land  and  people  are  so  poor; 
we  ought  rather  to  wonder  that  we  still  have 
anything  to  eat.  It  is  time  that  the  German 
nation,  its  bishops  and  princes,  should  regard 
itself  also  as  a  Christian  people  and  should 
guard  from  such  devouring  wolves  the  multi- 
tude that  is  committed  to  it  to  rule  and  defend 
in  good  things,  bodily  and  spiritual.     0  noble 

77 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

princes  and  gentlemen,  how  long  will  you  leave 
your  land  and  people  at  the  mercy  of  these 
devouring  wolves!  Every  prince,  nobleman, 
city,  should  at  once  prohibit  their  subjects  from 
sending  the  annates  to  Eome.^  As  though 
among  all  the  Christians  on  earth,  the  Ger- 
mans should  be  the  clowns  of  the  Pope  and 
suffer  what  no  other  folk  will  stand.  We  have 
the  name,  the  title  and  the  coat  of  arms  of  Em- 
pire, but  the  Pope  has  its  treasure  and  power. 
The  Pope  has  the  kernel  and  we  play  with  the 
shells.  Let  the  Pope  give  up  Eome  and  all  that 
he  has  taken  from  the  empire,  give  our  land  a 
rest  from  tax  and  oppression,  give  back  to  us 
our  freedom,  power,  honor,  bodies  and  souls, 
and  let  it  be  an  empire  indeed.  Has  not  our 
noble  nation  been  led  by  the  nose  long 
enough  f  ^  There  is  much  of  the  secular  mixed 
with  the  religious  in  the  appeal  of  this  great 
spiritual  revolutionist. 

Through  the  years  which  followed  this  ap- 
peal, Luther  steered  a  course  which  is  rather 
difficult  to  follow.  When  some  of  the  nobles 
took  up  arms  to  free  the  country,  Luther,  of 
whose  sympathy  they  felt  assured,  strenuously 
besought  them  to  lay  them  down.  He  insisted 
that  the  Word  of  God  should  be  free  to  win 
its  own  victories.  When,  inspired  in  part  at 
least  by  a  new  sense  of  spiritual  worth,  the 
peasants  took  up  arms  against  the  oppression 

•  The  first  year's  revenue  of  a  new  clerical  appointee. 

7  Printed  in  Rade's  Luther,  Vol.  I,  pp.  597-673.     For  these  quotations  see 
pp.  612,  613,  614,  617,  623,  629,  667. 

78 


The  Beginnings  of  the  National  Churches 

of  their  rulers,  fully  as  tyrannical  as  the  Pope, 
Luther  denounced  them  as  reckless  anarchists. 
The  Word  must  have  free  course.  When  im- 
prisoned in  the  Wartburg,  his  followers  in 
Wittenberg,  now  in  a  great  majority  in  the 
place,  sought  to  conform  public  worship  to  the 
new  teachings  by  force,  Luther  left  his  seclu- 
sion and  at  the  risk  of  life  insisted  that  the  old 
Roman  practices  should  be  tolerated  for  the 
sake  of  brotherly  love.  The  Word  had  not  yet 
won  its  own  way.  For  most  of  their  respective 
lives  his  prince,  Frederick  the  Wise,  and  he 
thoroughly  agreed.  The  Word  was  to  have  free 
course  and  the  prince  was  to  give  it  liberty.  But 
after  some  years  had  gone  by,  there  came  a  time 
when  Luther  thought  the  Word  had  won  its  way 
sufficiently  to  be  given  entire  control  of  public 
worship  and  of  church  institutions.  Hence  he 
demanded  that,  for  the  sake  of  public  peace, 
Roman  masses  should  be  suppressed  by  secular 
force  both  in  the  monastery  and  in  the  court 
church.  He  claimed  that  public  order  was  en- 
dangered by  allowing  the  few  stubborn  Stifts- 
herren  who  resisted  the  Word  to  continue  in 
their  practises.  Frederick  refused  to  inter- 
vene, on  Luther's  own  ground  that  a  Prince 
must  not  interfere  with  religion,  lest  he  should 
be  figliting  spiritual  battles  with  carnal 
weapons.  This  incensed  Luther,  who  was  now 
emphasizing  the  duty  of  the  prince  to  public 
order.  When  Frederick  died  and  was  suc- 
ceeded by  the  Elector  John,  Luther  had  his 

79 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

way.  John  believed  that  it  was  his  duty  as  a 
Prince  to  preserve  public  order  and  that  it 
was  his  duty  as  a  Christian  Prince  to  see 
that  the  Lord  was  not  blasphemed  in  the 
mass.  Luther  and  he  agreed  that  while  the 
conscience  was  to  be  ruled  only  by  the  Lord, 
and  while  a  man  should  be  free  to  worship  in 
private  as  he  pleased,  public  worship,  public 
religious  instruction,  public  religious  funds 
from  monasteries,  etc.,  and  even  the  nomination 
of  evangelical  bishops  lay  in  the  hands  of  the 
prince.  In  holding  this  position,  Luther  was 
really  falling  back  on  a  general  custom  of  his 
Province  of  Saxony  which  was  in  vogue  before 
his  time.  In  the  breakdown  of  ecclesiastical 
authority,  Luther,  w^ho  hated  anarchy,  had  re- 
course to  the  only  authority  there  was.  The 
Christian  congregation  was  to  give  its  assent 
to  the  call  of  a  minister  and  should  normally 
take  the  initiative  in  all  changes  of  church 
practise,  but  the  Christian,  that  is,  the  Evan- 
gelical, Prince  was  the  Protector,  a  kind  of 
forced  bishop,  indeed,  of  the  Church,  and  must 
see  to  its  welfare.  From  his  standpoint,  Luther 
claimed  that  a  Catholic  prince  should  give  the 
Word  an  opportunity  to  reform  the  community, 
though  not  being  a  Christian  prince,  he  was  in 
no  position  to  put  a  stop  to  the  blasphemy  of 
the  Catholic — or  rather,  devilish — mass.  But 
this  position  was  not  practical;  Catholic  and 
Evangelical  had  to  come  to  some  agreement 
that  would  go  on  all  fours  and  soon  Luther 

80 


The  Beginnings  of  the  National  Churches 

found  himself  forced  to  agree  to  the  position 
that  there  should  be  but  one  mode  of  public 
worship  in  each  principality/  Public  order,  in 
other  words,  had  triumphed  over  individual 
freedom  and  eventually  the  religion  of  the  sub- 
jects was  determined  by  the  religion  of  the 
prince.  Here,  therefore,  began  that  aristo- 
cratic tinge  in  the  church  founded  by  the  great 
democrat,  Luther.  The  power  of  the  Pope  was 
destroyed,  but  each  individual  prince  became  j 
a  little  Protestant  Pope  instead.  The  main  / 
object  of  Lutheran  ministers  became  the  con- 
version of  Princes,  in  order  that  they  might 
later  convert  their  subjects.  The  fate  and  regu- 
lation of  religion,  in  other  words,  passed  from 
an  official  representative  of  its  own  to  the 
representative  of  the  secular  power.  This 
change  can  only  be  regarded  by  religious  men  , 
as  a  necessary  visitation  of  Providence  for  the 
purifying  of  religion,  a  new  Babylonish  exile 
from  its  promised  land.  A  Church  state  is  a 
perfectly  possible  ideal;  a  State  church  is  the 
renunciation  of  the  ideal.  It  is  putting  the 
Church  under  the  heels  of  the  State. 

Nor  do  we  find  a  very  different  state  of  affairs 
in  Ziirich,  the  only  other  spot  in  Europe  that 
can  lay  claim  to  being  an  independent  center  of 
Protestant  faith.  The  chapter  in  the  Cam- 
bridge Modern  History  which  deals  with  the 
Swiss  Eeformation  opens  with  this  clear  state- 
ment:   '^The   Helvetic   Eeformation,    like    the 

8  Cf.  Rade's  Luther,  Vol.  Ill,  Book  5. 

81 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

German,  Was  the  outcome  of  both  the  national 
history  and  the  Eenaissance. ' '  °  Zwingli  found 
Ziirich  a  city  independent  of  all  foreign  con- 
trol in  secular  affairs  and  granted  by  the  Pope 
no  mean  control  of  its  clergy.  Zwingli,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  appealed  to  the  magistracy 
of  the  city  as  to  the  last  authority  in  all  re- 
ligious and  ecclesiastical  questions.  Disputa- 
tions between  him  and  the  bishop  of  Constance 
were  heard  by  the  city  council  as  a  court  of 
last  resort ;  the  question  of  the  mass,  of  images, 
of  tithes,  of  the  partaking  of  meat  in  Lent,  were 
all  decided  by  this  body.  The  decrees  of  the 
burgomaster  and  the  magistracy  decided  all 
matters  concerning  the  state,  its  religious  prac- 
tises and  military  practises  alike.  In  the 
famous  confession  of  faith  which  Zwingli  sent 
to  Charles  V,  he  declares:  ^^I  know  the  magis- 
trate, when  properly  inaugurated,  holds  God's 
place  no  less  than  the  prophet. ''^°  With 
Luther,  Zwingli  distinguished  between  the  true 
and  the  external  church,  and  believed  that  the 
external  church  is  guided  in  the  Providence  of 
God  by  the  real  church  embosomed  within  it, 
but  he  himself  asserted  that  for  legislative  pur- 
poses, the  local  church  of  any  city  is  repre- 
sented by  the  board  of  magistrates  of  the  city. 
One  of  his  earliest  theses,  at  the  basis  of  all  his 
work,  ran  thus : '' All  that  the  so-called  spiritual 
order  claims  to  belong  to  it  of  right  and  for  the 

9  Cambridge    History,  Vol.  II,   p.  305. 
"  Printed  in  Appendix  to  S.   M.  Jnrl-.'son's    Huldreich  Zwingli,  p.  479. 

82 


The  Beginnings  of  the  National  Churches 

protection  of  the  right,  belongs  to  the  secular 
arm,  when  it  is  Christian/'"  There  can  be 
therefore  little  wonder  about  Zwingli's  absorp- 
tion in  statesmanship,  about  his  eagerness  for 
war,  about  his  endeavors  to  form  a  large  inter- 
national confederacy  with  Ziirich  as  its  center. 
The  State  was  the  Church  and  the  Kingdom  of 
God  was  to  come  through  uniting  Christian 
States.  Zwingli's  republicanism  saves  his 
church  from  being  a  creature  of  the  prince,  as 
it  became  under  Luther,  but  its  authority  was 
lodged  in  the  secular  government  and  exercised 
by  men  who  were  chosen  not  for  their  com- 
petency for  its  affairs  alone.  It  was  strictly 
national,  although  perhaps  we  may  say  that  it 
was  more  nearly  the  State  itself  than  an  ap- 
pendage of  the  State.  There  was  little  room 
for  divergent  types  of  belief  and  piety;  Ana- 
baptists in  Zurich  were  dealt  with  as  enemies 
of  the  government;  to  think  for  oneself  about 
religion  tended  to  lead  one  into  crime  against 
the  state. 

When  we  turn  our  eyes  to  England,  we  come 
on  a  far  sorrier  picture.  There  are  few  more 
disgraceful  performances  in  history  than  the 
secession  of  the  English  Church  from  Rome. 

Exhausted  by  the  long  civil  strife  of  the 
Wars  of  the  Roses,  the  weakened  barons  and 
the  impoverished  country  were  more  than  con- 
tent to  allow  the  rough  and  ready  Edward  lY 
to  rule  without  the  counsel  of  Parliament  and 

"  Given  in  Jackson's  Zwingli,  p.  184- 

83 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

to  establish  unquestioned  authority  in  the  land. 
Plenry  VII,  uniting  in  his  own  person  the  line- 
age of  both  Lancaster  and  York,  continued  to 
increase  the  power  and  prestige  of  the  mon- 
archy. At  the  accession  of  Henry  VIII,  a  well- 
filled  treasury,  the  possession  of  the  single  train 
of  artillery  in  the  kingdom  and  the  good  will 
and  confidence  of  the  conspicuous  scholars  of 
the  Eenaissance  made  the  King  the  one  com- 
manding figure  of  the  Kingdom.  The  creation 
of  his  adoring  minister,  Wolsey,  as  Papal 
Legate,  accustomed  even  churchmen  to  look  to 
the  Court  of  the  King  instead  of  to  Rome  for 
ecclesiastical  decisions.  Adored  at  home, 
Henry  wished  to  be  mightier  abroad.  His  wife, 
Catharine,  was  the  aunt  of  the  Emperor 
Charles,  and  Henry  had  expected  to  share  in 
his  conquests.  Charles  however  treated  Henry 
with  disdain,  and  Wolsey  thought  a  French 
alliance  would  be  better  than  the  Spanish  one. 
Hence  he  sought  to  induce  the  Pope  to  allow 
Henry  to  divorce  his  Spanish  wife.  The  Pope 
temporized,  but  finally  refused.  Meanwhile 
Henry,  unaccustomed  to  restraint,  grew  infatu- 
ated with  a  lady  of  his  court,  and  pressed  the 
demand  for  a  divorce  no  longer  to  strengthen 
his  kingdom  but  to  satisfy  his  own  heart.  It 
seemed  to  him  monstrous  that  a  Pope  at  Rome 
should  interfere  with  the  will  of  the  King.  His 
lady-love  grew  impatient  with  Wolsey,  the 
Papal  legate,  and  he  fell.  Cromwell,  one  of  Wol- 
sey 's  friends,  suggested  to  the  King  that  he  take 

84 


The  Beginnings  of  the  National  Churches 

the  reins  into  Ms  own  hand  and  cut  loose  from 
the  only  power  that  presumed  to  dictate  to  him. 
Thus,  on  the  desire  of  a  profligate  and  able 
King  for  a  divorce,  the  Church  of  England  as  a 
separated  church  was  founded.  The  entire 
church,  it  is  true,  seceded.  It  still  maintained 
its  ancient  rites  and  customs  and  orders.  But 
it  was  a  ditferent  church,  because  it  recognized 
a  different  supreme  authority.  The  Pope  was 
no  longer  its  supreme  head.  And  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  Henry  caused  the  convocation 
of  clergy  to  pronounce  him  supreme  head  of 
the  Church,  in  order  that  he  might  divorce 
Catherine  and  wed  Anne  Boleyn.  There  were 
no  doubt  causes  which  contributed  to  this  seces- 
sion from  the  Papal  institution.  Colet  had  not 
discovered  and  preached  the  simplicity  of  Jesus 
in  vain.  The  impoverishment  of  the  land  by 
the  monasteries  and  of  the  monasteries  by  the 
Pope  stirred  discontent  with  what  came  to  be 
regarded  as  foreign  domination  of  the  church 
by  the  Pope.  But  the  real  foundation  of  the 
Church  of  England  was  the  new  conception  of 
the  majesty  and  authority  of  the  King  of  the 
Nation  and  the  chance  desire  of  that  Nation  ^s 
king  to  do  something  prohibited  by  the  church. 
The  maxims  which  More  mentions  in  the 
Utopia  as  prevalent  in  the  land  are  symptoms 
of  the  satisfaction  in  the  new  national  strength 
and  sovereignty,  to  wit,  to  use  his  language, 
^^the  maxim  that  the  king  can  do  no  wrong, 
however  much  he  may  wish  to  do  it;  that  not 

85 


Some  Turning-points  in  Church  History 

only  the  property  but  the  persons  of  his  sub- 
jects are  his  own;  and  that  a  man  has  a  right 
to  no  more  than  the  King's  goodness  thinks  fit 
not  to  take  from  him. ' '  ^^  It  was  this  temper 
that  led  to  the  definite  humiliation  and  plunder 
of  the  church  which  had  been  enriched  by  the 
humiliation  and  plunder  of  the  barons.  As 
Green  says :  * '  To  reduce  the  great  ecclesiastical 
body  to  a  mere  department  of  state,  in  which 
all  authority  should  flow  from  the  sovereign 
alone  and  in  which  his  will  should  be  the  only 
law,  his  decision  the  only  test  of  truth,  was  a 
change  hardly  to  be  wrought  without  a  strug- 
gle, ' '  ^^  but  it  was  wrought  and  the  Act  of  Su- 
premacy was  duly  and  unanimously  passed  that 
^Hhe  King  shall  be  taken,  accepted  and  reputed 
the  only  supreme  Head  in  earth  of  the  Church 
of  England  and  shall  have  annexed  and  united 
to  the  Imperial  Crown  of  this  realm  as  well  the 
title  and  style  thereof  as  all  the  honors,  juris- 
dictions, authorities,  immunities,  profits  and 
commodities  to  the  said  dignity  belonging,  with 
full  power  to  visit,  redress,  reform  and  amend 
all  such  errors,  heresies,  abuses,  contempts,  and 
enormities,  which  by  any  manner  of  spiritual 
authority  or  jurisdiction,  might  or  may  law- 
fully be  reformed. ' '  ^*  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  as  in  Germany  and  Switzerland,  the  so- 
called  Protestant  Church  of  England  was  a 
product  in  its  outward  form  of  the  national 

'2  Cited  in  Green's  Short    History  of  the  English  People,  p.  333. 

^^  Green's  Short    History,  p.  344- 

^*  Green:     History  of  the  English  People.      Vol.  II,  p.   159. 

86 


The  Beginnings  of  the  National  Churches 

development  of  the  times.  And  even  when  in 
the  reign  of  Edward  VI  and  of  Elizabeth  the 
real  spirit  of  Protestantism  began  to  make  it- 
self felt  in  England,  there  was  no  suggestion 
of  any  save  a  State  Church,  regulated  by  Par- 
liament and  demanding  uniformity  throughout 
the  nation.  Had  we  time  to  examine  the  church 
in  Geneva  from  which  these  later  religious  in- 
fluences reached  England  and  Scotland,  we 
should  find  the  case  no  different.  Toleration 
was  a  sign  of  looseness  of  faith  and  courage. 
The  State  decided  the  belief  and  the  religious 
practises  of  its  subjects.  If  a  man  rendered 
unto  Caesar  the  things  that  were  Caesar's,  then 
he  could  render  to  God  what  was  God's,  but 
only  then.  God  still,  to  all  intents  and  purposes, 
had  a  vicar  on  earth.  It  was  not  the  Pope ;  he 
was  Anti-Christ;  but  it  was  Caesar.  It  is  true 
there  were  many  Caesars  and  their  rule  was 
limited  by  definite  geographical  lines,  but 
within  those  lines,  they  were  supreme  in  estab- 
lishing and  maintaining  the  outward  tests  and 
ordinances  of  religion.  Everywhere  in  Protes- 
tantism, religion  became  the  subservient  and 
generally  the  obsequious  servant  of  the  State. 
Lord  Acton  has  thus  expressed  the  desperate 
situation:  ^* Nations  eagerly  invested  their 
rulers  with  every  prerogative  needed  to  pre- 
serve their  faith  and  all  the  care  to  keep  church 
and  state  asunder  and  to  prevent  the  confusion 
of  their  powers,  which  had  been  the  work  of 
ages,  were  renounced  in  the  intensity  of  the 

87 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

crisis.  .  .  .  When  the  last  of  the  Eeformers 
died,  religion,  instead  of  emancipating  the  na- 
tions, had  become  an  excuse  for  the  criminal 
acts  of  despots/'  ^^ 

And  I  hardly  think  it  an  exaggeration  to  say- 
that  everywhere  on  Protestant  territory  the 
church  became  an  arm  of  the  state.  It  was 
forced  into  a  subservient  and  often  into  an 
obsequious  attitude.  It  hardened  and  even 
sanctified  national  divisions;  it  vastly  aided 
racial  prejudice ;  it  helped  to  produce  centuries 
of  war.  The  present  catastrophe  in  Europe  is  an 
outcome  of  governmental  greed  and  suspicion, 
but  most  of  the  men  in  control  of  the  policies 
of  the  governments  now  at  war  are  devout  and 
conscientious  members  of  national  churches 
and  the  deep  distrust  at  the  foundation  of  this 
carnage  is  not  purely  the  distrust  of  one  gov- 
ernment for  another  but  of  one  nation  for  an- 
other. And  it  seems  to  me  quite  impossible  to 
acquit  organized  Christianity  of  aiding  and 
abetting  the  greatest  crime  of  the  century. 
Unless  we  deny  Christianity  any  influence  over 
men's  minds  at  all,  we  must  reluctantly  hold 
it,  as  organized  under  the  suzerainty  of  the 
States,  a  guilty  accomplice  of  wholesale  mur- 
der. For  in  England  and  Germany  the 
churches  have  been  under  the  unquestioned 
guidance,  control  and  support  of  the  secular 
power.  In  Russia  the  Holy  Orthodox  Church, 
although,  originally,  not  devoid  of  pretensions 

^^  History  of  Freedom  and  other  Essays,   pp.  43-44- 

88 


The  Beginnings  of  the  National  Churches 

to  Catholicity,  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes  a 
national  church.  Since  1700  there  has  been  no 
Muscovite  patriarch  and  the  Czar  has  presided 
over  the  Holy  Synod.  The  new  Constitution  of 
the  Eussian  Church  builds  upon  the  absolute 
supremacy  of  the  Czar,  and  the  Holy  Synod  is 
simply  a  department  of  the  national  govern- 
ment. In  these  countries  all  the  holy  impulses 
of  religion  have  magnified  the  nation  and  have 
often  substituted  patriotism  for  the  brother- 
hood of  man.  It  is  true  that  Catholicism  has 
done  but  little  better  in  assuaging  race  hatred 
and  that  Austria,  Italy  and  France  are  en- 
tangled in  this  fratricidal  conflict.  But  it  is 
only  fair  to  point  out  that  it  is  a  divided  and 
disrupted  Catholic  Church  to  which  they  have 
belonged.  Protestantism  split  the  ecclesiastical 
unity  of  mankind  and  substituted  for  it  a 
system  of  organized  public  worship  which  has 
glorified  those  national  divisions  and  concep- 
tions which  are  among  the  greatest  enemies  of 
the  essential  spirit  of  Christianity.  If  there 
were  anything  needed  to  condemn  the  principle 
of  a  national  church  and  of  religious  establish- 
ment under  the  control  of  a  delimited  state, 
this  European  War  has  supplied  the  need.  The 
world  cries  out  to-day  either  for  a  world-wide, 
a  genuinely  catholic  organization  of  Christian- 
ity, on  the  one  hand,  or  for  a  Church  in  which 
the  catholic  spirit  of  Jesus  reigns  and  in  which 
all  national  lines  are  ignored  and  obliterated 
on  the  other. 

89 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

The  Papacy  must  indeed  have  been  corrupt 
to  have  fallen  before  so  secular  a  conception  of 
the  Church  as  that  which  resulted  in  these  na- 
tional organizations.  Had  there  not  been  hid- 
den at  the  heart  of  the  nations  the  principle  of 
religious  freedom,  the  Eeformation  of  Luther 
might  well  have  been  termed  the  most  sinister  ^ 
event  in  the  history  of  Christianity. 

Fortunately,  there  were  men  who  held  re- 
ligion too  high  to  allow  it  to  be  controlled  by 
secular  powers.  And  the  remaining  lectures  in 
this  course  are  devoted  to  a  portrayal  of  their 
tragic  personal  fate  and  of  their  high  and 
enduring  accomplishments. 


110 


LECTURE   IV 

THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   THE    FREE 
CHURCHES 


LECTUEE   IV 

THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   THE    FEEE 
CHUKCHES 

The  free  church  is  no  Protestant  creation; 
the  first  church  was  free.  The  Jewish  followers 
of  the  Nazarene,  driven  from  the  synagogue  of 
the  ancients,  were  not  bound  by  the  chains  of 
the  State.  Free  were  they  to  worship  and  to 
fellowship  as  was  revealed  to  them  from  their 
risen  Lord.  As  they  grew  stronger,  they  be- 
gan to  be  ferreted  out  by  the  imperial  authori- 
ties for  persecution.  They  had  no  thought  of 
obeying  the  dictates  of  the  State,  no  dream  that 
it  would  ever  carry  out  theirs.  The  State  and 
they  were  scarcely  enemies,  but  they  were  not 
friends.  Yet  in  the  course  of  time  the  State 
and  Church  captured  each  other — and  weakened 
each  other.  Under  Theodosius,  at  the  close  of 
the  fourth  century,  the  Empire  and  the  Church 
began  to  coalesce  and  the  fatal  process  cul- 
minated in  the  year  425,  when  Valentinian  III 
decreed  that  all  citizens  of  the  Koman  Empire 
should  become  Christians.  The  Pope  did  not 
decree  that  all  Christians  should  be  citizens  of 
Rome;  the  Emperor  decreed  that  all  citizens 
should  be  followers  of  Christ.  As  outward 
force  was  the  cause  of  unity,  the  world  moulded 

93 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

the  church  more  than  the  church  moulded  the 
world.  But  since  that  fatal  coalition,  consider- 
able groups  of  earnest  Christians  have  not  only 
expressed,  but  organized,  their  dissatisfaction 
at  the  conformity  of  the  church  to  the  world. 
Even  before  the  Church  made  its  surrender  to 
the  Empire,  the  Montanists  broke  away  from 
its  growing  inflexibility  and  respectability  in 
the  interests  of  freedom  for  the  Spirit  and  sub- 
jugation for  the  flesh.  Just  as  their  influence 
waned  the  Novatians  arose  on  the  issue  of  the 
laxity  of  the  church,  gathered  into  their  fellow- 
ship the  struggling  remnants  of  the  Montanists, 
and  were  dubbed  the  Catharoi  (the  pure)  by 
their  cynical  opponents.  Scarcely  had  these 
old  Puritans  grown  weak  under  persecution 
and  ostracism,  when  the  widespread  Donatist 
movement  set  in.  This  fellowship  endured  for 
well  over  a  hundred  years,  until  the  very  time 
in  which  Valentinian  published  his  edict.  It 
was  marked  by  a  more  well-defined  opposition 
to  a  worldly  church  than  any  of  the  earlier 
sects.  It  insisted  on  re-ordination  and  re-bap- 
tism of  all  who  had  been  defiled  by  ecclesiastical 
association  with  those  church  officials  who  had 
proven  faithless  under  the  last  great  persecu- 
tion to  which  the  church  was  exposed.  There 
was  scarcely  ever  a  time  when  the  Eoman 
Church  was  the  sole  representative  of  religion 
even  in  its  own  territory.  Save  perhaps  in  the 
7th  and  8th  centuries,  there  were  always  earnest 
souls  who  felt  that  religion  was  not  identical 

94 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

with  the  church,  and  who  desired  a  purer  fel- 
lowship. It  is  hard,  perhaps,  to  acquit  them 
of  a  touch  of  Pharisaism  but  their  souls  were 
cramped  by  formalism  and  officialism.  When 
the  hardening  influences  of  a  stereotyped  eccle- 
siasticism  were  reinforced  by  the  authority  of 
the  State,  the  religious  life  of  the  Church  be- 
came still  further  ossified ;  there  was  more  rea- 
son for  rebellion  but  a  far  graver  risk  in  it. 
When  the  Church  controlled  the  machinery  of 
the  State  and  when  the  State  was  insisting 
upon  unity  throughout  its  heterogeneous  do- 
minions, it  seemed  necessary  to  submit.  To 
rebel  meant  to  rob  the  inevitably  victorious 
church  of  the  few  who  were  in  earnest  about 
their  religion.  In  the  words  of  an  anonymous 
Romance  tract  of  the  12th  century:  ^^The  elect 
of  God  were  captives  in  Babylon  and  served 
as  gold  with  which  Antichrist  covered  his  van- 
ity. ' '  ^  But  though  for  a  while  new  sects  were 
not  formed,  the  decreasing  Donatists  and  the 
Priscillians,  a  Pietistic  sect,  continued  until 
well  into  the  latter  half  of  the  sixth  century. 
The  spirit  represented  by  them,  however,  did 
not  altogether  die  out,  for  in  the  beginning  of 
the  ninth  century,  the  Paulicians,  denouncing 
Sacramentalism  and  the  worship  of  saints  and 
relics,  arose  and  flourished  until  in  the  11th 
century  they  seem  to  have  poured  their 
strength  into  a  Slavic  movement  of  consider- 

1  Quoted    in     Neander's    History    of    the    Christian    Religion    and    Church 
{Torrey's  translation).  Vol.  IV,  p.  615. 

95 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

able  significance,  known  as  the  Friends  of  God. 
Along  the  trade-lines  from  the  East  to  the 
West,  this  movement  spread  in  force  and  grew 
in  power,  until  under  the  name  of  Catharists 
it  virtually  possessed  Southern  France  and 
reached  into  Germany  on  the  North  and  into 
Spain  on  the  South.  Thoroughly  dualistic  in 
its  theology,  it  emphasized  the  necessity  of  the 
most  stringent  ascetism  at  least  for  its  Apos- 
tles, who  by  a  peculiar  Sacrament  received  the 
power  to  forgive  the  sins  of  their  followers. 
They  denounced  the  worship  and  Sacraments 
of  the  church,  the  reading  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, the  worship  of  saints  and  the  cross,  and 
declared  in  unmistakable  tones  that  all  Catholic 
priests  had  committed  the  unpardonable  sin. 
By  the  severity  and  abnegation  of  their  lives 
and  the  power  of  their  preachers,  they  gained 
the  hearts  of  the  people  and  maintained  them- 
selves well  into  the  thirteenth  century.  Either 
among  them  or  at  one  side  of  them,  Peter  of 
Bruis  and  Henry  of  Lausanne  overwhelmed 
the  priests  with  their  mighty  eloquence,  and 
for  the  first  time  in  history  denounced  not  only 
the  mass  but  the  baptism  of  infants,  insisting 
upon  faith  as  necessary  to  church  membership, 
and  to  the  high  title  of  Christian."  Before  they 
had  spent  their  force,  the  sudden  death  of  a 
friend  drove  Peter  Waldo  to  a  study  of  the 
scriptures  and  to  so  strong  a  desire  to  proclaim 

'^  For    a    brief  account    of  these   Sects    see    Neander    {Torrey):      History    of 
the  Christian  Religion,   Vol.  IV,  pp.  5S 3-604. 

96 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

their  good  tidings  that  the  inhibition  and  even 
excommunication  of  the  Pope  had  no  weight 
either  with  him  or  his  followers.  By  no  means 
unhappy  in  the  Eoman  church,  and  maintaining 
a  close  doctrinal  resemblance  to  it,  wonderfully 
free  from  vagaries  of  every  sort,  appealing  but 
little  to  the  imagination,  with  the  instincts  of 
Bible-readers  yet  condemned  to  be  heretics,  it 
seems  indeed  a  freak  of  fate  that  of  all  these 
schismatics  that  have  been  mentioned,  they 
alone  have  withstood  all  the  violent  persecu- 
tions directed  against  them  and  have  remained 
unto  this  day.  But,  as  we  shall  see,  ^^come- 
outers"  fail  where  ^  ^  driven-outers ' '  succeed. 
Perhaps  the  sanity  of  their  communion  pro- 
tected them  from  extermination  on  the  one 
hand  and  from  any  determining  influence  on 
the  other.  But  this  in  all  fairness  we  must  say : 
without  intending  to,  and  without  appearing  to 
have  the  spiritual  riches  to  justify  it,  it  is  to 
them  that  the  world  owes  the  first  enduring  free 
church  of  history.  Of  all  communions  on  earth 
to-day  they  have  lived  longest  without  being 
tied  to  any  secular  power  and  without  ever 
having  sacrificed  their  apparently  unneeded 
independence.  It  is  difficult  to  correctly  es- 
timate the  extent  and  quality  of  their  influence. 
It  was  exerted  in  various  ways,  some  of  which 
we  can  trace,  but  it  is  probable  that  it  is  the 
most  important  that  we  cannot  trace.  Through 
Nicholas  of  Basle,  Waldensian  thought  power- 
fully influenced  the  mystic  Tauler  and  through 

97 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

his  writings  not  only  quickened  the  hearts  of 
many  of  the  noblest  Catholics  but  reached  and 
moulded  Luther  himself.  How  far  it  was  re- 
sponsible for  the  great  Protestant  Free-Church 
movement,  to  which  we  are  to  turn  in  a  moment, 
is  more  doubtful,  but  so  similar  were  the  two 
movements  in  their  beliefs  that  these  words  of 
David  of  Augsburg  concerning  the  Walden- 
sians,  written  only  about  fifty  years  after 
Waldo's  death  in  1218,  seem  as  if  they  must 
have  been  written  to  describe  the  Anabaptists 
three  hundred  years  later.  "Having  been  cast 
out  from  the  Catholic  Church  they  affirm  that 
they  alone  are  the  Church  of  Christ  and  dis- 
ciples of  Christ.  They  say  that  they  are  the 
successors  of  the  apostles  and  have  apostolic 
authority  and  the  keys  of  binding  and  loosing. 
They  say  that  the  Eomish  Church  is  the  Baby- 
lonish harlot  and  that  all  who  obey  her  are 
damned.  They  say  that  for  the  first  time  is  a 
man  truly  baptized  who  is  inducted  into  their 
heresy.  But  some  say  that  baptism  does  not 
avail  for  little  children,  because  they  cannot 
yet  actually  believe.  They  repudiate  all  cleri- 
cal orders,  saying  they  would  be  rather  a  curse 
than  a  sacrament.  Every  oath  is  unlawful. 
They  say  it  is  not  lawful  to  put  malefactors  to 
death  through  secular  judgment. ' '  ^  The 
primacy  of  the  Waldensians  among  free 
churches  caused  many  later  similar  movements 
to  be  called  by  their  name  or  at  least  to  be 

^  See    Newman:    History  of  Anti-Ppdnhnpiism,   p.   46. 

98 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

regarded  as  their  spiritual  children.  So  it  was 
with  the  Bohemian  brethren,  for  example,  ac- 
cording to  the  testimony  of  Prof.  Newman. 
I  have  unfortunately  been  unable  to  get  at  the 
original  authorities  of  this  important  move- 
ment. Its  originator,  the  saintly  Peter  Chel- 
cicky,  declares  that  the  apostasy  of  the  Church 
began  when  the  relation  of  Church  and  State 
changed.  He  affirms  that  an  insoluble  contra- 
diction is  involved  in  the  expression,  ^Hhe 
Christian  State,"  since  to  the  essence  of  the 
state  belongs  compulsion,  which  is  abhorrent  to 
the  true  Christian.*  Yet  curiously  enough,  if 
Archivar  Keller  is  correct,  the  Bohemian 
brethren  never  separated  themselves  from  the 
state  church.^  We  know  however  that  Nicholas 
Storch,  an  important  figure  in  the  first  stage  of 
the  Anabaptist  movement  which  we  are  about 
to  consider,  was  influenced  by  them  both  in 
thought  and  in  church  organization,  and  it 
seems  not  unlikely  that  he  knew  them  as  Wal- 
densians.^  It  may  therefore  well  be  that  the 
Waldensian  movement  was  the  channel  through 
which  the  new  life  in  Bohemia  poured  itself  into 
the  still  newer  life  of  Germany.  And,  once 
again,  in  that  later  offspring  of  the  Anabaptist 
movement  which  we  call  the  Mennonite  con- 
nection, which  flourished  in  those  parts  of  the 
Netherlands  in  which  considerable  remnants  of 
the  Waldensians  were  settled,  we  find  the  Men- 

*  Newman:  History  of  Anti-Pedobaptism,  pp.  450,  451. 
^Keller:    Die    Wiedert'aufer,   p.    16. 
^Newman,  op.  cit.,  p.  68. 

99 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

nonite  leader,  Cornelius  van  Huyzen,  recogniz- 
ing the  Waldensians  as  the  originators  of  their 
creed  and  worship.  Indeed  later  we  find  some 
English  sectaries  asserting  that  through 
Mennonite  and  Waldensian  they  had  main- 
tained an  unbroken  succession  from  the  apos- 
tles. But  here  again  the  Waldensian  movement 
is  only  an  adopted  father  of  children  of  quite  a 
different  parentage.  It  is  the  sturdiest  of  a 
long  succession  of  free-church  movements  be- 
fore the  Reformation,  but  no  more  than  they, 
and  far  less  than  some  of  them,  did  it  occupy 
the  center  of  the  religious  drama  of  the  times. 
It  was  only  when  Luther  and  Zwingli  had  made 
possible  to  men  a  free  connection  with  God  that 
the  spiritual  atmosphere  was  produced  in  which 
a  free  church  movement  could  become  a  perma- 
nent and  vital  force  in  the  world. 

The  great  free  church  movement  of  Protes- 
tant, of  essentially  non-conforming,  Christians 
was  borne  into  the  world  by  Anabaptists  and 
made  vital  by  Congregationalists — ^^for  the 
base  things  of  the  world  and  the  things  that  are 
despised  did  God  choose,  yea,  and  the  things 
that  are  not  to  bring"  not  ^'to  nought"  in  this 
case  but  to  completion,  ''the  things  that  are." 

I  wish  that  some  great  scholar  might  give  his 
strength  to  the  sympathetic  examination  and 
presentation  of  the  Anabaptist  storm  of  the 
early  sixteenth  century,  or  rather  of  that  storm 
of  which  strict  Anabaptism  was  the  blackest 
cloud.    It  is  impossible  to  describe  it;  it  is  al- 

100 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

most  impossible  even  to  hold  it  together.  Bul- 
linger,  its  fairest  contemporary  chronicler,  dis- 
tinguishes twelve  different  ^  ^sects''  among 
them,  and  there  were  doubtless  more,  though 
they  were  different  from  what  he  thought  them. 
They  differed  from  each  other  on  a  thousand 
minor  points  which  the  sympathetic  Capito 
justly  said  ^^  stand  outside  of  any  connection 
with  the  honor  of  God''  ^  and  they  were  ready 
to  endure  persecution  and  death  for  each  dif- 
ference. They  differed  from  each  other,  also,  on 
some  most  vital  points, — on  the  authority  of  the 
Old  Testament  and  even  on  that  of  the  New, 
on  the  use  and  form  of  the  sacraments  and  on 
the  constitution  of  the  church,  on  the  existence 
of  civil  government,  on  the  sufferance  of  oaths 
and  private  property,  on  the  duration  of  the 
world,  and  on  the  use  of  force.  Nearly  all 
primitive  Anabaptists  disbelieved  in  physical 
resistance  to  evil ;  long  before  the  Quakers  were 
thought  of  hundreds  of  these  convinced  paci- 
fists laid  their  lives  do^\ai  joyfully;  yet  the 
movement  also  included  those  who  mistook  Jan 
of  Leyden  for  the  Messiah  and  set  up  a  polyg- 
amous kingdom  of  God  at  Munster  which  they 
defended  with  swords  and  strategy  for  well  on 
toward  two  years  against  some  of  the  best  sol- 
diery of  the  time.  All  kinds  of  people  belonged 
to  this  wide-spread  movement — the  Zwickau- 
prophets  who  terrorized  and  sterilized  Luther 
and   the    Huttites    fleeing    from    well-ordered 

^  Newman,  op.  cit.,  p.  2^5. 

101 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

homes  because  they  would  not  allow  their  prince 
to  strike  a  blow  in  their  defense,  Hans  Denck 
and  Schwengfeld,  contemptuous  of  all  outward 
rites  and  organization  and  those  who  insisted 
that  only  the  immersed  were  open  to  salvation, 
the  scholarly  Grebel  and  Hubmaier  and  the  Lit- 
tle Greek  marched  side  by  side  with  Blaurock 
the  peasant  and  Andy  of  the  Crutches — but 
upon  this  one  point  they  all  agreed,  that  over 
the  consciences  to  which  God  had  spoken  no 
man  nor  state  nor  church  had  any  poiver.  The 
Spirit  had  come  to  them  and  they  were  not  to 
be  longer  in  subjection  to  the  beggarly  elements 
of  this  world.  It  was  for  freedom  that  Christ 
had  set  them  free  and  they  would  far  rather 
part  from  the  body  than  from  this  free  Spirit. 
They  were  often  wild  and  they  were  usually  un- 
stable, but  they  were  a  noble  army  of  martyrs. 
There  is  little  exaggeration  in  this  bitter  de- 
scription of  them  by  Zwingli ;  ' '  They  judge  the 
faults  of  others  but  see  none  of  their  own.  To- 
day they  wish  this;  to-morrow  its  opposite; 
to-day  no  government,  a  little  later  a  govern- 
ment indeed,  but  one  in  which  no  governor  shall 
be  considered  a  Christian ;  to-day  they  demand 
a  church  of  their  own,  afterwards  they  de- 
nounce the  state  for  protecting  the  preaching 
of  the  gospel ;  at  one  time  the  priests  should  be 
slain,  at  another  they  should  be  allowed  free 
rein;  when  children  are  baptized  they  bellow 
that  there  is  no  sin  greater.  They  perform  more 
such  monkey-tricks  every  day  than  the  African 

102 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

wild-beasts.  They  greet  no  one  of  whom  they 
disapprove.  They  quarrel  at  all  corners  of  the 
city;  if  that  is  forbidden  them,  they  go  into 
their  private  quarrel-houses  and  sit  in  judg- 
ment on  all  men.  When  they  have  finished 
with  that,  they  rinse  each  other  out  with  such 
bitterness  that  there  is  enough  gall  left  to  bathe 
in.  Such  a  poor,  confused,  bitter  temper  they 
call  Spirit,  whereas  it  is  a  most  melancholy 
flesh. '^  In  other  words  they  were  free  men  of 
the  spirit  like  their  progenitors  in  Corinth, 
prophets  who  had  not  learned  to  control  their 
prophetic  spirits.^  But  they  counted  not  their 
lives  dear  unto  themselves  and  some  of  the 
most  moving  scenes  in  Christian  history  are 
their  martydoms  at  the  hands  of  their  brethren 
in  the  state  churches,  for  whom  they  prayed 
in  all  tenderness  as  the  fire  kindled  about  them. 
It  is  only  recently  that  justice  has  been  shown 
them  at  the  hands  of  historians.  Their  name. 
Anabaptists,  second  Baptizers,.  has  been  not 
only  scornful  but  misleading.  For  most  of  us 
to-day  they  are  a  rout  of  fanatical  sacramen- 
tarians.  It  is  true  that  they  bitterly  denounced 
infant  baptism  and  that  nearly  all  of  them 
recognized  the  validity  of  the  baptism  of  be- 
lievers only,  but  the  great  movement  had  some- 
thing far  more  fundamental  at  stake  than  the 
form  of  a  Christian  rite.  Its  deepest  interest 
and  its  originating  motive  lay  outside  the  sacra- 
mental realm.    Egli,  the  great  modern  author- 

8  1  Cor.  14  :  32. 

103 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

ity  on  the  Swiss  Reformation,^  who  was  a  care- 
ful investigator  of  Anabaptist  origins,  has 
brought  enough  original  material  to  light  to  dis- 
tinguish three  distinct  periods  in  their  brief  and 
startling  history.  The  first,  beginning  in  the 
summer  of  1523,  had  to  do  with  a  separate 
church,  the  second,  beginning  in  the  summer 
of  1524,  had  to  do  with  infant  baptism,  only  the 
third,  beginning  in  January  of  1525,  had  to  do 
with  the  public  baptism  of  those  who  were  com- 
pelled to  disoAvn  the  baptism  administered  to 
them  in  their  infancy.^*^  Separation  from  the 
state  church  was  their  primary  object;  ques- 
tions regarding  baptism  were  quite  secondary 
to  that.  The  witnesses  against  Felix  Manz, 
who  was  drowned  by  order  of  the  court,  garbled 
a  real  truth  when  they  affirmed  that  he  told 
them  that  ^*  there  was  more  behind  baptism 
than  was  yet  declared''  and  ^^that  baptism 
would  at  last  overthrow  the  government. ' '  ^^ 
Long  ago  Dorner  correctly  estimated  the  rela- 
tive importance  of  these  three  leading  convic- 
tions of  theirs,  when  he  wrote:  ^^Zwingli  saw 
that  the  setting  aside  of  infant  baptism  was  the 
same  as  setting  aside  the  National  Church,  ex- 
changing a  hitherto  national  reformation  of  the 
church  for  one  more  or  less  Donatist.  And  if 
infant  baptism  were  given  up,  there  remained 
as  the  proper  time  for  its  administering  only 

9  The  greatest    work   on   this    entire    movement    is    his    unfinished   Geschichte 
der  Schweizerischen  Reformation. 
^^Egli,  op.  cit.,  p.  323. 
^^Burrage:    Anabaptists  in  Switzerland,  p.  102. 

104 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

the  moment  when  living  faith  and  regeneration 
were  certain. ''^^  Sebastian  Franck,  a  con- 
temporary chronicler,  saw  into  their  hearts 
when  he  wrote  of  them:  ^^ Certain  ones  among 
them  wish  a  Christian  to  be  so  holy,  simple, 
innocent,  dead  to  the  world,  so  perfect,  that  he 
should  never  live  after  the  flesh  nor  seek  that 
which  is  upon  the  earth.  Therefore  a  Chris- 
tian does  not  desire  to  live  in  accordance  with 
the  world,  nor  to  value  anything  worldly. 
Dying  and  living  are  the  same  to  him;  indeed 
this  life  has  become  a  monotony. ' '  ^^  And 
though  Nippold  goes  too  far  when  he  says  that 
the  Anabaptists  were  the  first  to  defend  the 
separation  of  Church  and  State,"  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  erection  of  a  spiritual  church 
after  the  copy  of  the  Apostolic  church,  freed 
from  the  strangling  alliance  with  the  State,  was 
their  initial  as  well  as  their  highest  hope.  With 
a  cause  so  essential  to  religion  we  can  well  un- 
derstand why  Zwingli  declared  the  destruction 
of  the  Papal  church  to  be  ''child's  play''  in 
comparison  with  the  annihilation  of  these  sec- 
taries.^^ 

In  the  joy  of  seeing  one  tyranny  overthrown, 
these  clear-thinking  and  high-spirited  men  were 
horrified  to  see  another  being  set  up.  A  Papal 
despotism  was  bad  enough  but  it  was  at  least 

^^Geschichte  der  Protestantischen  Theologie,  pp.  293-294,  quoted  in  Burrage, 
op.  cit.,  p.  76. 

13  Keller:     Wiedertiiufer,   p.   I4. 

^*Berner  Beitrage,  quoted  in  Nitsche:  Geschichte  der  Wiedert'dufer  in  der 
Schweiz. 

^^Egli,  op.  cit.,  p.  332. 

105 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

a  spiritual  despotism,  whereas  the  new  regime 
in  their  city  of  Ziirich  was  a  secular  one.  The 
Spirit  of  Christ,  Dweller  within  the  individual 
soul,  was  being  enthralled  by  the  state.  Men 
chosen  for  their  business  acumen  and  their 
military  capacity  were  to  become  the  authori- 
tative judges  of  a  divine  force  which  brooked 
no  judgment  and  to  which  most  of  them  were 
strangers.  They  were  much  truer  than  Luther 
to  those  words  of  his:  ^^From  the  beginning 
the  worldly  and  the  spiritual  offices  have  been 
sundered  by  Christ.  And  experience  shows  but 
too  clearly  that  there  can  be  no  peace  where 
the  city  controls  the  preacher  or  where  the 
preacher  controls  the  city. ' '  ^^  They  feared 
that  true  religion  would  fare  worse  under  mer- 
chants than  under  bishops.  They  could  see 
but  little  gain  in  substituting  Zurich  for  Rome. 
"These  Baptists,"  said  old  Bullinger,  "com- 
plain that  the  evangelical  preachers  use  the 
government  in  matters  of  religion  and  that  they 
declare  not  only  that  it  may,  but  that  it  should, 
busy  itself  concerning  matters  of  faith.  But 
they  (the  Baptists)  hold  the  precise  opposite 
most  stubbornly, — in  which,  indeed,  they 
agree  in  part  with  the  Papists  who  would  shut 
out  the  Kaiser,  the  King,  the  Princes  and  all 
lords  from  the  affairs  of  faith  and  church." 
'  Here  the  amazed  Protestant  historian  reveals 
to  us  the  spiritual  brotherhood  of  Papists 
and    Free    Christians,    standing    shoulder    to 


16  Hast:   Geschichte  der  Wiedertdufer,  p.  147. 

106 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

shoulder  for  the  independence  of  religion 
against  the  Protestant  secularists.  It  is  be- 
cause of  this  horror  at  the  secularization  of 
religion  that  in  the  old  Anabaptist  record,  we 
find  these  proud  words:  ^^Anno  1524  and  1525 
is  God's  Word  and  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ 
come  into  all  Germany  after  the  Peasants' 
War.''  We  are  fortunately  in  possession  of 
some  of  the  earliest  conversations  which  her- 
alded that  coming.  The  three  men  who  may 
be  regarded  as  its  discoverers  are  Stumpf,  a 
preacher,  Grebel,  a  young  humanist,  and  Felix 
Manz,  a  citizen  of  learning  and  position. 
These  three,  Bullinger  tells  us,  thought  first  to 
win  Zwingli  to  their  views. — ^^Over  and  over 
they  visited  him  and  Jud  (his  colleague)  and 
reminded  them  that  both  of  them  should  found 
a  separate  people  and  church,  in  which  Chris- 
tians should  live  guiltlessly  according  to  the 
Gospel  and  should  not  be  corrupted  by  interest 
or  other  usury.  They  should  kill  all  the  priests, 
Stumpf  said;  he  had  told  his  people  that  they 
should  not  pay  interest  nor  tithes.  Stumpf 
and  Grebel  insisted  on  having  all  things  in 
common.  WJien  Manz  said  once  that  no  one 
should  be  allowed  in  the  new  church  that  was 
not  without  sin,  Zwingli  asked  if  he  would  lilce 
to  be  one  of  them.  At  a  meeting  at  Jud 's  house, 
the  enthusiasts  told  Zwingli  that  he  went  too 
slow  and  was  lukewarm  in  the  concerns  of  the 
Church  and  God's  Kingdom.  The  Spirit 
spurred  to  greater  seriousness.  .  .  .  The  apos- 

107 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

ties  in  Jerusalem  separated  themselves  from 
the  wicked  that  they  might  establish  a  company 
of  the  faithful.  So  in  Ziirich  it  was  necessary  to 
separate  from  the  crowd  and  to  gather  a  pure 
church  and  a  company  of  outspoken  children 
of  God,  who  have  His  spirit  and  are  ruled 
thereby.  Zwingli  replied  that  the  apostles  had 
separated  only  from  the  enemies  of  the  Gospel, 
not  from  those  that  were  on  the  way  to  become 
its  friends.  ^^Dear  brethren,^'  he  said,  ** don't 
think  too  much  of  yourselves.  Be  patient  with 
the  weak,  sick  flock  that  belong  with  you  in 
Christ's  fold,  and  separate  rather  from  the 
works  of  darkness.  You  will  not  induce  me  to 
favor  such  a  separation  as  you  desire,  for  I 
cannot  enter  into  it  with  God. ' '  ^^  Shortly  after 
these  famous  conversations,  a  great  disputa- 
tion was  held  in  the  city  of  Ziirich  regarding 
the  mass  and  the  destruction  of  images.  When 
Grebel,  at  the  close  of  its  second  day,  proposed 
that  the  priests  should  be  correctly  instructed 
in  regard  to  the  mass,  Zwingli  replied  that  the 
members  of  the  Council  would  decide  that  mat- 
ter. At  once  Stumpf  cried  out :  ^ '  You  have  no 
right  to  leave  the  decision  with  them.  The 
decision  is  already  given.  The  Spirit  of  God 
decides.  Should  the  gentlemen  of  the  Council 
give  a  decision  contrary  to  the  Word  of  God, 
then  imploring  Christ  for  His  Spirit,  I  will 
teach  and  act  against  them.''^^    All  this  time 

17  Nitsche,  op.  cit.,   p.  9.     Egli,  op.  cit.,  pp.  89-90. 

i^Burrage,  Anabaptists   in  Switzerland,  p.   69.    Egli,   op.   cit.,   p.    106. 

108 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

nothing  seems  to  have  been  said  regarding  the 
baptismal  rite,  because  of  which  they  have  so 
unjustly  been  dubbed  Anabaptists.  And  even 
after  they  had  denounced  Infant  Baptism  in  a 
public  disputation  as  a  creation  of  the  Pope 
and  had  begun  to  baptize  their  adherents,  the 
Council  of  Ziirich  issued  the  following  procla- 
mation: ^'Moreover  (in  the  same  discussion)  it 
clearly  appeared  that  the  authors  of  Anabap- 
tism,  by  whom  these  gatherings  and  sects  were 
first  raised  and  for  which  they  strive,  were 
actuated  in  this  affair  by  a  bold  and  shameless 
mind  and  not  by  a  good  spirit,  intending  to 
gather  around  them  a  separate  people  and  sect, 
contrary  to  God's  commands,  in  contempt  of 
the  civil  magistrate,  to  the  planting  of  every 
kind  of  disobedience,  and  to  the  destruction  of 
Christian  love  to  neighbors.  For  they  regard 
themselves  as  without  sin  and  better  than  their 
fellow-Christians,  as  their  words,  actions,  and 
life  clearly  testify. ''"  The  Council  did  not 
allow  a  dispute  about  baptism  to  cover  up  their 
initial — to  them  blasphemous — purpose  of  es- 
tablishing a  separated  church.  And  two  years 
later  still  (1527),  understanding  the  root 
of  all  this  turmoil  and  refusing  to  stress 
the  baptismal  controversies,  the  Council 
invited  the  other  members  of  the  Swiss  Con- 
federacy to  take  common  measures  against  the 
Anabaptists  who  were  aiming  at  the  destruc- 
tion ^^not  only  of  the  true  right  faith  of  Chris- 

^^Burrage,  op.  cit.,  p.  146- 

109 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

tian  hearts  but  also  of  outward  and  human 
ordinances  and  institutions  of  Christian  and 
ordinary  government,  against  brotherly  love 
and  good  morals."  ^°  The  leaders  of  the  move- 
ment, then,  regarded  the  State  Church  and  in- 
cidentally the  State  itself,  as  then  constituted, 
as  their  prime  foe.  This  fact  alone  accounts 
for  the  fierceness  and  the  persecution  directed 
against  these  free-churchmen  by  Catholics  and 
Evangelicals,  by  princes  and  Keichstag,  by 
cities  and  magistrates.  They  had  no  concep- 
tion of  the  rights  that  men  claim  when  they  be- 
lieve themselves  to  be  liberated  from  human 
tyrannies  by  the  Spirit  of  God;  it  was  simply 
their  clear  duty  to  put  down  the  beginnings  of 
anarchy.  And  though,  after  the  movement 
spread  from  Ziirich  where  it  originated  in  its 
noblest  form,  it  became  largely  a  Baptist  prop- 
aganda, we  are  reminded  every  once  in  a  while 
of  its  deeper  meaning  by  the  statements  of — or 
about — its  individual  converts.  Thus  Capito 
bears  witness  to  Michael  Sattler  martyred  at 
Rothenburg  in  1527,  saying  that  **he  showed 
great  zeal  for  the  honor  of  God  and  the  Church 
of  Christ,  which  he  wished  to  have  pure  and 
irreproachable  and  free  from  offense  to  those 
without.'^"  Even  as  late  as  1551,  Ghirlandi, 
an  Italian  priest,  left  the  Eoman  Church  and 
finally  joined  the  Mennonite  branch  of  this 
movement,  because  he  **  sought  a  people  who 
should  be  free  from  bondage  of  sin  through 

^'^  Newman,  op.  cit.,  p.  147. 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

the  gospel  of  truth,  and  should  walk  in  newness 
of  life,  a  people  that  is  God's  holy,  unspotted 
church,  separate  from  sinners,  without  wrinkle 
and  without  blemish. ' '  ^^  And  Menno  Simon, 
perhaps  the  noblest  and  most  efficient  of  all 
the  Anabaptists,  converted  to  them  in  spite  of 
the  outrageous  extravagances  of  Muenster, 
which  he  loathed,  whose  work  influenced  Eng- 
lish and  future  American  dissenters,  and  whose 
churches  abide  to  this  day,  is  proof  that  the 
movement  even  in  its  later  stages  was  never 
without  the  high  enthusiasm  of  its  initial  pro- 
test against  bondage  to  the  world.  **We  must 
be  born  from  above,"  he  says,  ^^and  transposed 
out  of  the  evil  nature  of  Adam  into  the  good 
way  of  Christ  from  which  a  new  life  follows. 
The  poor  ignorant  people  are  vainly  consoled 
through  external  works  and  exercises.  Let 
each  one  ...  no  longer  trust  in  the  fact  that  he 
is  a  baptized  Christian,  nor  upon  long  usage, 
nor  upon  papal  decrees,  nor  upon  imperial 
edicts  nor  upon  the  wit  of  the  learned,  nor  upon 
human  counsels  and  wisdom.  No  Scripture 
says  that  a  carnally-minded  man  without  new 
birth  from  God's  Spirit  has  been  save'd  nor  can 
be,  merely  because  he  boasts  his  faith  in  Christ 
or  hears  mass  or  goes  to  Church  or  makes  pil- 
grimages. For  us  a  counsel  has  been  made  in 
heaven,  to  which  alone  we  listen  and  which 
alone  we  must  follow.''  ^^ 


22  Newman,  p.  331. 

23  I.e.,  p.  300. 


Ill 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

Freedom  has  always  been  regarded  as  a  dan- 
gerous word  by  those  in  authority;  it  is  not 
therefore  to  be  wondered  at  that  these  obscure 
men  who  contended  so  unequivocally  for  it  as 
a  right,  and  not  merely  as  a  convenience,  at  the 
gray  dawn  of  the  modern  era,  should  have  been 
persecuted  by  States  and  princes  and  should 
themselves  have  been  bitter  against  the  State. 
Sebastian  Franck  estimated  that  more  than 
two  thousand  Anabaptists  were  executed  in 
the  five  years  between  1525  and  1530.^*  It  is 
somewhat  strange  that  in  the  face  of  these 
figures,  the  Christian  world  should  throw  its 
hands  quite  so  high  in  air  over  the  blasphemous 
Kingdom  of  God  in  Muenster.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  it  should  rather  seem  strange  that  the 
main  movement  of  the  Anabaptists  should  have 
been  so  slightly  influenced  by  the  Peasants^ 
War  at  its  beginning  and  should  have  been 
blotted  by  only  one  Muenster  at  its  height. 

If  our  estimate  of  the  dominant  force  behind 
this  movement  be  in  the  direction  of  the  truth, 
it  is  not  strange  that  w^e  should  find  so  many 
extreme  opinions  with  regard  to  government 
attributed  to  its  leaders.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
they  disagreed  about  its  function  and  its  rights. 
They  may  be  said  to  be  unanimous  in  their 
belief  that,  as  Bothman  put  it  in  the  earlier 
days  of  the  development  at  Muenster, ' '  In  mat- 
ters of  faith  the  assembled  church  and  not  the 
magistracy  has  the  authority.''-^     The  Mora- 

24  Newman,  p.  151. 

25  I.e.,  p.  281. 

112 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

vians  admitted  that  God  had  given  the  princes 
authority  over  unbelievers.^®  Hubmaier  in- 
sisted that  the  civil  power  has  the  right  to  ex- 
ecute evil  doers  but  that  God  alone  should 
punish  the  godless. ^^  They  would  have  all  sub- 
scribed to  the  preface  in  which  Castellio  dedi- 
cated his  Latin  Bible  to  Edward  VI:  ^^The 
only  enemies  of  our  faith  are  vices  and  vices 
can  be  conquered  only  by  virtues.  The  Christ, 
who  said  if  they  strike  you  on  the  one  cheek, 
turn  the  other  also,  has  called  us  to  the  spiritual 
task  of  instructing  men  in  the  truth,  and  that 
work  can  never  be  put  into  the  hands  of  an 
executioner. ' '  ^^ 

There  were  some  among  them  who  went 
further  than  this.  Manz,  accused  for  having 
denounced  magistracy,  asserted  that  he  held 
rather  that  no  Christian  might  exercise  it, 
though  no  one  should  punish  with  the  sword.^^ 
Melanchthon  names  certain  Anabaptists  in 
Jena  who  held  that  no  Christian  could  be  a 
magistrate,  because  no  Christian  should  punish 
with  the  sword. ^°  This  view  was  widely  held, 
so  widely  that  when  Henry  VIII,  in  far  off  Eng- 
land, proclaimed  religious  toleration  in  1540, 
he  expressly  excepted  those  who  held  that  it 
was  unlawful  for  Christians  to  bear  office.^^ 
There  was  a  strong,  though  not  quite  unan- 

26  Hast:  Die  Wiedertaufer,  pp.  206-7. 

27  Newman,  op.  cit.,  p.  97. 

^^  Jones:    Spiritual  Reformers  in  16th  and  17th  centuries,  p.  93. 
^^Cf.  Burrage,   op.   cit.,   pp.    102,    106. 
^0  See   Hast,    op.  cit.,  p.  2S7. 
31  Newman,  op.  cit.,  p.  350. 

113 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

imous,  feeling  among  the  free-churchmen 
against  warfare  of  any  kind,  some  refusing  to 
pay  taxes  for  war,  some  refusing  to  engage  in 
war,  though  not  unwilling  to  supply  soldiers 
with  food  (Jacob  Gross  of  Strassburg),  the 
great  majority  insisting  upon  unqualified  non- 
resistance.  Melchior  Hoffman  was  indeed  the 
first  prominent  free-churchman  (for  Muenzer 
was  not  a  free-churchman)  to  abandon  the 
idea.^^  The  Moravians,  like  Muenzer,  insisted 
on  community  of  goods,  which  raised  the  wrath 
of  the  nobles,  who  had  been  already  roundly 
denounced  by  such  Anabaptist  leaders  as 
Grebel,  Kantius  and  Koubli.^^  Very  many,  too, 
refused  to  take  oaths.  But  biblical  reasons 
were  operative  at  many  of  these  points  as  well 
as  democratic  ones.  And  it  may  well  be 
doubted  whether  any  other  leaders  than  Hut 
and  Tiziano  opposed  magistracy  as  an  institu- 
tion and  wished  to  live  without  a  State.  John 
Bruppacher  of  Zumikon,  though  on  the  rack, 
declared  that  he  had  never  heard  that  the  Ana- 
baptists teach  that  there  should  be  no  govern- 
ment or  that  they  sought  to  overthrow  it.^*  The 
Eoman  Catholic  priest,  Faber,  claimed,  it  is 
true,  in  a  little  brochure  published  soon  after 
the  martyrdom  of  the  scholarly  Anabaptist, 
Hubmaier,  that  he  had  confessed  to  him  that 
^Hheir  reason  and  object  was  to  have  no  gov- 
ernment but  only  from  their  own  number  to 

I    ^-^Cf."  Newman,' op.  cit.,''pp.  184,  185,  207,  235,  2^2,  etc. 
83  I.e.,  p.  235. 
^  Burrage,  op.  cit.,  p.  211. 

114 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

draw  out  and  elect  one.''  ^^  But  in  Hubmaier's 
treatise  '^On  the  Sword,"  we  read  rather  '^To 
punish  the  wicked  is  not  to  hate  the  enemy; 
the  magistrate  does  not  kill  from  wrath  but 
according  to  the  commandment  of  God. ' '  ^^ 

Curiously  enough  this  fierce  battle  for  re- 
ligious freedom,  the  first  costly  skirmish  for  a 
free  church  in  a  free  state  which  may  be  said 
to  belong  to  the  main  campaign  in  which  we 
are  still  engaged,  was  fought  for  an  outpost 
apparently  a  good  way  from  the  base.  For 
though  it  was  the  relation  of  Church  and  State 
that  was  at  stake,  the  issue  was  joined  concern- 
ing the  sacrament  of  baptism.  And  yet  any  one 
who  has  transported  himself  sympathetically 
to  the  times  of  the  Reformation  has  no  difficulty 
in  explaining  that  fact.  The  controversy  con- 
cerning the  Lord's  Supper  was  really  the  bat- 
tle-field over  which  was  waged  the  battle  be- 
tween the  Papists  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
Protestants  on  the  other.  Behind  that  conflict 
indeed  was  the  far  deeper  one  regarding  the 
basis  upon  which  sinful  men  might  find  accep- 
tance with  God,  but  the  sacramental  conception 
of  the  Roman  Church  was  the  visible  token  of 
its  conquest  over  the  hearts  of  the  people.  And 
history  has  shown  that  Zwingli  and  Calvin  es- 
timated its  importance  and  its  inevitable  effects 
far  more  truly  even  than  Luther.  So  the  men 
who  fought  for  religious  freedom,  who  groaned 

"  Vedder:     Hubmaier,  pp.  240-241. 

34  Printed  in  Vedder' s   Hubmaier.     See  particularly  pp.  287,  296,  SOI. 

115 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

under  the  subjection  of  the  church  and  the 
Christian  to  a  company  of  aldermen,  saw  that 
it  was  again  a  sacrament  that  stood  like  ada- 
mant in  their  path.  What  the  mass  was  to  the 
reformers  because  of  what  it  implied  concern- 
ing the  basis  of  justification,  infant  baptism 
was  to  the  free-churchmen  because  of  what  it 
implied  with  regard  to  membership  in  the 
church.  In  those  ritualistic  times,  what  the  eye 
saw  carried  greater  weight  than  what  the  ear 
heard,  and  no  matter  what  was  decided  about 
the  efficacy  of  the  mass  and  about  the  impor- 
tance of  personal  faith,  if  every  one  was  bap- 
tized in  infancy  and  if  every  one  who  was  so 
baptized  was  regarded  as  a  member  of  the 
church,  it  was  evidently  hopeless  to  differenti- 
ate a  Christian  and  a  citizen.  The  weightier 
matters  of  religion  would  be  buried  under 
tithes  and  taxes,  and  the  Church  would  become 
a  branch  of  the  police  of  the  city  councils. 
Therefore  it  was  that  in  Zwingli's  phrase,  the 
people  were  ^^so  hot  about  infant  baptism,  ^'^^ 
therefore  that  disputation  after  disputation 
was  called  to  consider  it  in  the  various  towns  of 
Switzerland  and  South  Germany  and  therefore 
that  every  town  council  agreed  with  the  spirit 
of  the  proclamation  of  the  council  of  Zurich: 
*^A11  children  must  be  baptized  as  soon  as  they 
are  born  and  all  parents  ignoring  this  shall  be 
imprisoned."  The  agitation  about  baptism  of 
infants  ended  in  transferring  the  rite  from  a 

3'  Cf.  Nitsche:  Geschichte  der  Wiederdtufer,  p.  28. 

116 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

law  of  the  Church  into  a  law  of  the  State.^^  The 
State  and  Church  became  thereby  indistin- 
guishable. 

But  fortunately  the  bold  champions  of  spiri- 
tual freedom  took  a  further  step,  more  daring, 
more  radical  than  any  they  had  been  called  to 
take  hitherto.  Surcharged  with  a  conscious- 
ness of  its  high  import,  the  old  Anabaptist 
document,  from  which  I  have  already  quoted, 
thus  recounts  it:  ^^The  Reformers  have  smit- 
ten the  vessel  out  of  the  hand  of  the  Pope,  but 
left  the  fragments  therein;  for  a  new  birth  of 
life  hath  one  never  seen  with  them.  ...  To  this 
wonderful  work  God  hath  called  men  in  Swit- 
zerland; amongst  them  have  been  Balthazar 
Hubmeyer,  Konrad  Grebel,  Felix  Manz  and 
Georg  von  Chur.  These  men  had  recognized 
that  one  must  first  learn  the  divine  message, 
the  love  of  an  active  faith,  and  only  after  hav- 
ing done  so,  should  he  receive  Christian  bap- 
tism. But  since,  at  that  time,  there  was  no 
servant  ordained  to  such  work,  Georg  of  the 
house  of  Jacob,  called  Blaurock,  rose  up  and 
prayed  Konrad  Grebel  in  the  name  of  God  that 
he  should  baptize  him.  After  that  was  done,  the 
others  there  present  did  demand  the  same  from 
Georg,  and  began  to  hold  and  to  teach  the  faith. 
Therewith  hath  the  separation  from  the  world 
originated  and  hath  grown  up.  ^ ' 

In  this  epoch-making  transaction  two  things 
are  to  be  noted.    The  first  is  that  no  words  are 

^^Burrage,   op.    cit.,    p.   99. 

117 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

wasted  regarding  the  form  of  baptism.  Some 
months  after  this,  a  man  named  Wolfgang  Uli- 
mann  was  immersed  in  the  Ehine  near  Schaff- 
hausen  at  his  own  request,  but  his  example  was 
only  partially  followed.  It  was  not  immersion, 
it  was  baptism,  about  which  these  high  words 
were  written.  And  the  second  thing  to  be  noted 
is  that  baptism  was  regarded  as  initiation  into 
the  church.  It  was  not  an  initiation  into  fel- 
lowship with  God.  As  Hubmaier  said  at  the 
beginning:  ^* Where  water-baptism  according 
to  the  ordinance  of  Christ  has  not  again  been 
instituted,  there  one  knows  not  who  is  brother 
and  sister,  there  is  no  church,  no  fraternal  dis- 
cipline or  correction,  no  exclusion,  no  sup- 
per.  '^  39  Qj.  ^g  Konrad  Grebel,  the  one  who  first 
dared  to  baptize  a  Christian  upon  whose  brows 
magic  holy  water  had  been  sprinkled  in  infancy, 
wrote  to  the  worldly  Muenzer,  ^'From  the 
Scriptures  we  learn  that  baptism  signifies  that 
by  faith  and  the  blood  of  Christ  our  sins  have 
been  washed  away,  that  we  have  died  to  sin 
and  walk  in  newness  of  life,  and  that  assurance 
of  salvation  is  through  the  inner  baptism, — 
faith, — so  that  water  does  not  confirm  and  in- 
crease the  faith,  as  the  Wittenberg  theologians 
say,  neither  does  it  save.  *  *  *^  Certainly  this  is 
a  noble  and  a  moderate  statement  to  come  from 
the  man  who  through  baptism  with  water  in- 
stituted the  new  Church.    And  may  I  here  in- 


^*  Newman,  op.  cit.,  p.  179. 
*°Burrage,  op.  cit.,  p.  87. 


118 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

sert  one  of  the  most  satisfying  statements  I 
have  ever  found  regarding  the  use  of  the  sacra- 
ments, even  though  it  be  a  digression!  It  is 
from  Hubmaier  and  reads  thus:  ^'In  baptism, 
one  pledges  himself  to  God  and  in  the  supper 
to  his  neighbor,  to  offer  body  and  blood  in  his 
stead  as  did  Christ  for  us.''*^ 

Now  I  do  not  affirm  that  the  so-called  Ana- 
baptist movement  had  for  its  only  impulse  the 
freeing  of  the  church  from  the  trammels  of 
the  State.  As  with  all  men,  the  motives  of  the 
Anabaptist  leaders  were  mixed.  There  was 
undoubtedly  an  element  of  Pharisaism  in  the 
movement,  of  jealousy  of  Zwingli  and  the 
preachers  to  the  well-positioned,  and  a  great 
pinch  of  impatience.  Besides  these  inevitable 
dashes  of  evil,  there  was  also  a  motive  of  great 
importance  to  which  only  passing  reference  has 
been  made.  It  was  a  desire  to  reproduce  the 
life  and  the  customs  of  the  early  church  and 
to  follow  literally  the  injunctions  of  Jesus  and 
the  New  Testament.  Harnack  has  said  that 
there  never  has  been  a  strong  religious  move- 
ment without  dependence  upon  outward  author- 
ity. That  authority  in  the  times  of  the 
Eeformation  was,  of  course,  the  Scripture. 
Nowhere  was  it  in  as  high  and  undisputed  favor 
as  in  Switzerland.  After  the  Zwickauer 
prophets  appeared,  Luther  in  a  letter  to 
Melanchthon  established  a  new  canon:  ''Quod 
non  est  contra  Scripturam  pro  Scriptura  est  et 

<i  Vedder:    Hubmaier,   p.   108. 

119 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

Scriptura  pro  eo/'  (That  which  is  not  opposed 
to  Scripture  is  in  favor  of  Scripture  and  Scrip- 
ture is  in  favor  of  it.)  But  Zwingli  adhered  to 
Luther's  earlier  one:  ''Eo  ipso  contra  Beum 
quod  sino  verho  Dei.''  (That  which  has  no  sup- 
port in  God's  word  is  thereby  proven  to  be  op- 
posed to  God.)^^  Hence  the  disputations 
on  infant  baptism  were  apparently  deter- 
mined by  the  appeal  to  Scripture  alone. 
Zwingli 's  assertion  that  infant  baptism  was 
the  divinely  instituted  substitute  for  circum- 
cision and  that  circumcision  was  explicitly  com- 
manded in  the  Scripture,  always  carried  the 
city  councils/^  who  had  other  unexpressed  rea- 
sons for  their  decision,  but  it  did  not  convince 
the  lay  mind.  Hence  we  find  Sebastian  Franck 
declaring  that  the  Anabaptists  built  upon  the 
letter  of  the  Scripture,  and  it  may  well  have 
been  true  that  many  of  the  humbler  classes 
joined  themselves  to  the  sect  not  because  of 
their  desire  for  a  free  church  but  because  of 
their  desire  for  scriptural  baptism.  I  think  it 
it  is  clear  that  the  rank  and  file  grew  insistent 
on  adult  baptism  simply  because  it  was  in 
accord  with  the  obvious  meaning  of  Scripture. 
And  yet  there  were  always  those  among  the 
Anabaptists  who  saw  deeper.  Georg  Schoferl 
of  Freistaedt,  for  example,  asserted  that 
^^  Christ  taught  the  common  people  the  gospel 
by  means  of  their  own  handicrafts,  but  for  the 

*2  Newman,    op.  cit.,  pp.  66,   73.       Egli:    Geschichte    der   Schweizerischen. 
Reformation,  p.  67. 

"  Cf.   Jackson's  Zwingli.     Chapter    XII. 

120 


The  Beginnings  of  the  Free  Churches 

sake  of  the  stiff-necked  scribes  he  used  Scrip- 
ture, for  which  purpose  also  it  must  still  be 
used  and  not  for  the  sake  of  the  common  man, 
for  he  can  be  more  successfully  instructed  by 
means  of  the  creatures.''^*  Hans  Denck,  hav- 
ing outgrown  his  Anabaptist  faith,  but  one  of 
the  most  prominent  men  in  the  whole  spiritual 
movement,  wrote  in  his  dying  statement:  ^^I 
value  the  holy  Scripture  above  all  human  trea- 
sures, but  not  so  high  as  the  Word  of  God,  which 
is  living,  powerful  and  eternal,  for  it  is  God 
Himself,  Spirit  and  no  letter. ' '  ^^  And  so  while 
Franck  upbraided  the  Anabaptists  for  their 
literalism,  Melanchthon  reported  scornfully 
that  the  Anabaptists  in  Jena  claimed  that  the 
Bible  must  be  taken  spiritually.*^  At  Muenster, 
before  the  extravagances  had  broken  out,  and 
the  Lutherans  and  the  Anabaptists  sought  for 
popular  distinguishing  watchwords,  the  shibbo- 
leth of  the  orthodox  evangelicals  was  ^ '  Christ '  ^ 
while  the  significant  shibboleth  of  the  Anabap- 
tist sectaries  was  ^  ^  Father. '' *^  With  all  their 
loyalty  to  the  New  Testament  there  was  a  spir- 
itual freedom  and  ecstasy  about  them  that  did 
not  allow  exclusive  emphasis  upon  the  historical 
and  objective  and  that  reproduced  the  charac- 
teristics of  the  primitive  Christians.  More  than 
they,  however,  they  emphasized  the  importance 
and  rigor  of  Church  Discipline,  and  when  a  con- 

«  Newman,  op.  cit.,  p.  220. 

*^  Jones:    Spiritual  Reformers,  p.  28.      Hast:    Wiedertaufer,  p.  225. 

^^Cf.     Hast:     Wiedertaufer,    p.    237. 

"  E.  S.  Bax:    Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Anabaptists,  p.  150. 

121 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

siderable  minority  appeared  in  any  local  church 
it  was  a  sure  signal  for  secession.  They  were 
not  strictly  congregational  in  their  organiza- 
tion; their  leaders  took  the  place  and  the  au- 
thority of  the  apostles.  But  their  authority 
was  not  sufficient  to  be  widely  recognized,  so 
that  in  constant  bickerings  and  divisions  they 
dissipated  their  spiritual  strength.*^  Under 
the  stress  of  persecution  without  and  bigotry 
within  and  under  the  black  stain  of  the  *^  Messi- 
anic reign '^  at  Muenster,  the  name  Anabaptist 
became  a  byword  and  a  hissing.  But  what  they 
did  was  not  done  in  a  corner.  The  idea  of  a 
free-church  became  familiar  to  Europe  and  was 
transplanted  to  the  saner  and  yet  stolider  race 
of  the  English.  For  underneath  all  jealousies 
and  deeper  than  spiritual  pride,  the  instinctive 
conviction  that  freedom  is  a  necessary  condi- 
tion of  religion  created  a  type  of  spiritual  life 
which  could  not  die  out  of  Protestantism. 

*8  Cf.  for  example  the  ancient  book  of    Ubbo  Philipps. 


122 


LECTUEE   V 

CONTRIBUTION    OF    CONGREGATION- 
ALISM TO   CHURCH  POLITY 


LECTURE   V 

CONTRIBUTION    OF    CONGREGATION- 
ALISM TO   CHURCH  POLITY 

The  first  Protestant  protagonists  of  free- 
dom, the  Swiss  and  German  Anabaptists,  failed. 
Many  reasons  contributed  to  that  failure. 
First  of  all,  they  were  pioneers,  and  pioneers 
usually  succeed  by  failing;  that  is  their  lot; 
they  lay  down  their  lives  for  their  cause.  The 
continent  of  Europe  was  prepared  for  a  revolt 
against  a  religious  tyranny  with  secular  am- 
bitions; it  was  not  prepared  for  a  weakening 
of  centralized  government;  freedom  and  an- 
archy it  could  not  differentiate.  The  apostles  of 
freedom  expected  to  be  hounded  and  they  were 
not  disappointed. 

But  they  contributed  quite  unnecessarily  to 
the  realization  of  their  expectation.  Their 
leaders  were  extremists  and  guilty  of  many 
excesses.  The  orgy  of  Muenster  was  in  itself 
sufficient  to  unite  the  higher  forces  of  civiliza- 
tion against  the  movement  out  of  which  it 
issued.  If  polygamy  and  the  mistaking  of  a 
cobbler  for  Elijah  were  the  fruits  of  religious 
freedom,  then  freedom  was  only  another  name 
for  insanity. 

Moreover,  these  apostles  of  freedom,  like 
125 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

most  of  those  who  range  themselves  under  its 
banner,  were  not  altogether  free.  They  were 
bound  to  reproduce  the  forms  as  well  as  the 
spirit  of  the  Apostolic  Age,  as  that  age  was 
revealed  in  the  Scriptures.  Unlike  the  Congre- 
gationalists  and  Presbyterians  of  a  later  dec- 
ade, they  did  not  overlook  the  apostles;  they 
went  so  far  as  to  consider  them  the  leading 
figures  in  the  apostolic  age.  Unable  to  regard 
them  as  extraordinary  and  as  unrepeatable  as 
the  miracles,  they  allowed  freedom  and  author- 
ity to  their  own  apostles.  They  thus  blocked 
their  path  to  democracy,  but  they  were  kept 
nearer  to  the  temper  and  the  forms  of  the  New 
Testament.  But  this  imitative  polity  gave  to 
ill-balanced  and  unbalanced  leaders  opportuni- 
ties for  carnage  which  their  fanaticism  used 
only  too  well.  Splits  and  counter-splits  at  the 
dictates  of  leaders  reduced  the  ship  of  freedom 
to  splinters;  it  foundered  on  mines  which  its 
own  crew  had  sown. 

Then,  too,  the  word  ^^ Anabaptist''  was  not 
a  mere  nickname.  The  cause  of  freedom  never 
gets  clear  of  entangling  alliances,  nor  did  it  in 
this  case.  It  was  obscured  by  a  debate  about 
a  sacrament.  It  is  true  that  to  the  Anabaptists 
the  rite  was  only  a  sign  of  an  inner  reality,  but 
the  world  was  slow  to  believe  that  men  would 
lay  down  their  lives  for  anything  which  they 
did  not  deem  of  ultimate  importance.  It  could 
not  understand — even  in  those  days — how  a  rite 
in  itself  unessential  could  become  essential  by 

126 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

being  commanded  in  the  Bible.  The  issue 
seemed  to  many  who  thought  more  than  they 
spoke  a  question  of  baptism  rather  than  of 
freedom  of  faith. 

And  not  only  that,  but  the  word  '^Ana^'  in 
this  compound  nickname  Anabaptist  was  not 
altogether  out  of  place.  Here  again,  the  noble 
men  who  were  thus  dubbed  protested  earnestly. 
They  did  not  believe  in  being  baptized  over 
again;  they  had  never  been  baptized.  But 
there  could  be  no  question  that  they  renounced 
communion  with  the  great  body  of  Christian 
people.  If  they  did  so  because  of  an  unessen- 
tial rite,  then  they  were  fanatics  beyond  the 
sacred  pale  of  common  sense;  if  they  did  so 
because  they  did  not  believe  in  the  Christianity 
of  Christendom,  then  they  were  Pharisees, 
Donatists,  Novatians,  Perfectionists,  judgers 
of  their  brethren,  bigots.  When  Eoger  Wil- 
liams later  accused  King  Charles  of  blasphemy 
for  calling  Europe  Christendom,^  he  spoke  the 
truth,  as  to-day  we  know  only  too  well,  but  he 
became  unendurable  even  to  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers.  If  Separatists  cannot  convert  the 
world  to  their  view,  so  that  they  are  Separatists 
no  more,  they  are  bound  to  go  under.  Non- 
Conformists  who  are  too  weak  to  be  more  than 
that  are  bound  to  be  regarded  as  moral  prigs, 
bound  to  be  an  eddy  in  the  great  stream  of 
social  and  political  life. 

And  so,  for  these  reasons  among  others,  the 

1  Winthrop:     History  of  New  England  {Savage's  edition).   Vol.  II,  p.  I45. 

127 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

noble  movement  for  real  freedom  in  religion 
on  the  continent  of  Europe  failed.  It  was  over- 
borne by  its  revolutionary  significance,  by  the 
fanaticism  of  its  leaders,  by  the  inadequacy  of 
its  chosen  sign,  by  the  uncertainty  of  its  polity 
and  the  elusiveness  of  its  authority,  and  by  its 
unescapable  tendency  to  Pharisaic  exclusive- 
ness.  It  failed.  And  from  its  failure  Europe 
has  never  recovered.  The  present  war  may  be 
more  wrapped  up  with  that  failure  than  any  of 
us  are  aware.  Eeligion  has  been  cramped  into 
national  moulds;  it  has  served  and  idealized 
and  emphasized  the  State,  its  benefactor  and 
subsidizes  It  has  strengthened  rather  than 
weakened  the  prejudices  of  race.  It  has  fol- 
lowed common  sense,  and  common  sense,  always 
intent  on  immediate  good  and  unconcerned  with 
wider  issues,  quite  untransformed  by  the  uni- 
versal impulses  of  real  religion,  has  produced 
a  catastrophe  in  comparison  with  which  Muen- 
ster  may  again  be  mistaken  for  the  New 
Jerusalem. 

It  is  the  glory  of  Congregationalism  to  have! 
taken  up  the  struggle  for  religious  freedom  and  I 
to  have   succeeded  where  Anabaptism  failed,  j 
To  it  does  not  belong  the  glory  of  conceiving  a^ 
free   church,   untrammeled   by   all   connection 
with  the  State.    To  that  great  idea  the  Baptists 
have  the  prior  claim  and  to  it  they  have  shown 
the  more  abiding  loyalty.     But  I  do  not  think 
it  is  too  much  to  say  that  what  Anabaptists 
failed  to  do  in  Europe,  Congregationalists  ac- 

128 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

complished  in  America.  They  were  the  chief 
influence  in  bringing  about  a  civilization  which 
is  chiselled  on  the  lines  of  freedom  and  in  which 
religion  has,  as  nowhere  else,  its  proper  and 
efficient  place. 

And  this  great  service  to  religion  and  man- 
kind, Congregationalists  performed  in  their 
own  despite.  There  was  that  in  their  principles 
and  in  their  natures  which  forced  them  to  a  free 
church  in  which  at  the  outset  they  did  not  be- 
lieve. The  idea  of  a  church  utterly  disassoci- 
ated from  the  state  was  known  in  England 
through  the  uproar  occasioned  by  the  proceed- 
ings and  the  persecutions  of  the  Anabaptists. 
And  it  was  well-nigh  universally  reprobated. 
The  Congregationalists  held  in  England  the 
position  on  the  extreme  left  which  the  Ana- 
baptists held  in  Europe.  They  were  equally 
despised  and  three  of  their  prominent  leaders 
were  executed  as  enemies  to  the  realm.  But 
the  Congregationalists  were  at  one  with  their 
countrymen  in  upholding  the  idea  of  a  state 
church;  they  only  insisted  that  the  state  au- 
thorities execute  the  mandates  of  the  Scrip- 
tures on  church  polity.  Of  the  first  ridi- 
culed and  persecuted  leaders,  there  is  only  one 
who  seems  to  call  for  a  free  church, — and  he  not 
quite.  He  was  the  theorist  among  them,  a  man 
of  considerable  more  brain  than  character,  who 
had  the  advantage  over  his  brethren  of  not  be- 
ing compelled  by  his  conscience  to  persist  in  his 
own  theories,  if  they  didn't  work  at  the  first 

129 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

trial.  His  name  was  Eobert  Browne.  He  is 
called  the  Father  of  Congregationalism,  not  be- 
cause he  was  the  leader  of  the  first  autonomous 
church — Fitz  was  that  ^ — or  because  out  of  his 
church  grew  the  first  enduring  Congregational 
society,  for  it  died,  but  because  not  being  both- 
ered by  experience,  he  drew  up  a  program  and 
a  constitution  in  which  he  set  forth  the  abiding 
characteristics  of  our  polity.  Concerning  the 
relation  of  church  and  state,  Browne  writes 
thus:  ^^Yet  may  they  (the  magistrates)  doo 
nothing  concerning  the  Church,  but  onelie  ciuile, 
and  as  civile  Magistrates  they  have  not  that 
authoritie  ouer  the  Church,  as  to  be  Prophetes 
or  Priestes  or  spiritual  Kings,  as  they  are  Mag- 
istrates ouer  the  same:  but  onelie  to  rule  the 
common  wealth  in  all  outwarde  Justice,  to 
maintain  the  right  w^elfare  and  honor  thereof, 
with  outward  power,  bodily  punishment,  and 
ciuil  forcing  of  men.  And  therfore  also  be- 
cause the  church  is  in  a  common  wealth,  it  is 
of  their  charge :  that  is  concerning  the  outward 
prouision  and  outward  iustice,  they  are  to  look 
to  it,  but  to  compel  religion,  to  plant  churches 
by  power,  and  to  force  a  submission  by  lawes 
and  penalties  belongeth  not  to  them,  .  .  . 
neither  yet  to  the  church.  Let  vs  not  therfore 
tarie  for  the  Magistrates.  ...  If  they  be  not 
christians  should  the  welfare  of  the  church  or 
the  saluation  of  men  hang  on  their  courtesief  ^ 

2  Cf.  Champlain  Burr  age:    Early  English  Dissenters,   Vol.  I,  93. 
8  I.e.,  Vol.  I,  p.  105. 

130 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

Even  Browne  assigns  to  the  State  the  outward 
provision  of  the  Church,  but  because  of  his  gen- 
eral drift  toward  Anabaptist  freedom  from  sec- 
ular control,  his  name  was  distasteful  even  to 
his  Congregational  successors.  Penry,  for  exam- 
ple, himself  a  martyr,  declares  that  ^^he  hates 
all  schism,  Donatist,  Anabaptist  or  Brown- 
ist. '  ^  *  Jacob,  the  founder  of  the  first  explicitly 
Congregational  church  in  England  that  did  not 
go  into  exile,  does  not  hesitate  to  say  that  ^^we 
and  all  true  visible  churches  ought  to  be  kept 
in  order  by  the'  stretching  out  of  the  magis- 
trate 's  arm. ' '  ^  Bradshaw  in  1605  proclaims 
that  the  Civil  magistrate  ^4s  the  only  one  on 
earth  that  has  power  to  punish  a  whole  church 
or  congregation. "  ^  The  independent  petition 
to  the  Rump  Parliament  in  1650  desires  com- 
pulsory worship,  a  parliamentary  commission 
to  regulate  mimisters  and  the  construing  of 
open  speaking  against  the  fundamentals  of 
Christianity  as  an  offense  against  the  State.'' 
Cromwell  established  a  church — the  broadest 
and  most  Congregational  ever  conceived — but 
he  established  it.  And  when  we  come  to  our  own 
American  forebears,  we  find  them  assuming  the 
same  position.  Of  all  Puritan  emigrants  to 
America,  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  were  the  most 
liberal  and  sensible,  but  even  they  had  no 
clearly    held    notion    of    separation    between 

*  Cf.  Champlain  Burrage:  Early  English  Dissenters,  Vol.  I,  p.  160,  note  S. 
5  Cf.  I.e.,    Vol.   I,   pp.   3,   10.       H.    W.   Clark:     History   of  English    Non- 
Conformity,  p.  200. 

^Burrage,  op.  cit..  Vol.  I,  p.  288. 
1  Clark,  op.  cit.,  p.  S56. 

131 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

Church  and  State.  Robinson  and  Brewster  over 
their  own  signatures  agreed  to  take  the  oath 
of  supremacy,  if  thereby  they  could  have  their 
form  of  polity  written  into  their  charter  from 
the  King.*  They  even  went  to  such  lengths  of 
concession  as  to  recognize  the  right  of  his  Maj- 
esty to  appoint  bishops  **to  oversee  the 
churches  and  governe  them  civilly  unto  whom 
they  are  in  all  things  to  give  an  account  and 
by  them  to  be  ordered  according  to  godliness.  '^  ^ 
They  did  not  regard  Church  and  State  as  two 
independent  powers  before  they  set  sail  for 
America.  Nor  did  they  later.  From  Salem, 
Gov.  Endicott  sent  back  two  worthy  men  to 
England  because  they  insisted  on  worshipping 
according  to  the  rites  of  the  English  church.^*^ 
The  Colonies  of  New  Haven  and  Massachusetts 
Bay  limited  both  the  office  holders  and  voters  to 
members  in  Congregational  churches,  no  other 
church  being  allowed.^^  Massachusetts  Bay,  the 
strongest  of  all  these  colonies,  under  the  mas- 
terful  influence  of  Winthrop,  spent  no  incon- 
siderable  part  of  its  legislative  activity  in  eccle- 
siastical matters.  Its  first  piece  of  legislation 
was  a  mandate  that  ^'houses  should  be  erected 
for  the  ministers  with  convenient  speed  at  the 
public  charge. ' '  ^^  One  man  was  whipped  and 
banished  for  writing  letters  to  England  slander- 

^  Bradford's    History  of  Plimouth   Plantation,  p.  44- 

*  Cf.    Williston   Walker:    History  of  Congregationalism,  p.   61;    Creeds  and 
Platforms  of  Congregationalism,  pp.  89-90. 

^°  Walker:     History  of  Congregationalism,   p.   107. 

"  I.e.,  pp.  114,  120,  122,  123. 

12  Winthrop,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  36,   note. 

132 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

ing  the  government  and  the  orders  of  the 
churches  ;^^  another  was  banished  for  affirming 
in  a  petition  that  the  Court  had  condemned  the 
truth  of  Christ;^*  another  was  banished  for 
claiming  that  he  had  not  sinned  for  six  months 
and  that  he  was  free  from  original  sin;^^  an- 
other was  fined  for  writing  a  book  against  taxa- 
ation  for  the  support  of  the  ministers.^^  In 
1638  a  law  was  passed,  which  however  was 
repealed  in  the  next  year,  giving  the  Court 
power  to  fine,  imprison  or  banish  any  one  who 
had  remained  in  a  State  of  Excommunication 
from  the  church  for  six  months.  Further,  ^^the 
denial  of  the  books  of  the  old  and  new  testa- 
ment— which  were  all  enumerated — to  be  the 
written  and  infallible  Word  of  God  was  punish- 
able either  by  banishment  or  death  for  the  sec- 
ond otfence  at  the  discretion  of  the  Court, 
and  an  inhabitant  who  was  guilty  of  this 
offence  upon  the  high  seas  was  made  liable 
to  the  penalty. ' '  ^^  Anabaptists  were  ban- 
ished, a  woman  hung  for  witchcraft  and 
four  Quakers  executed — all  in  the  very  har- 
bor of  Boston.^^  Roger  Williams  and  Mrs. 
Hutchinson,  enthusiasts  and  virtual  perfec- 
tionists,   were    banished,     though    they    were 

"  Cf.  Winthrop.  Vol.  I,  pp.  68,  73. 

14  I.e.,  Vol.  I,  p.  29. 

"  I.e.,  Vol.  II,  p.  22. 

16  Cf.  I.e.,  Vol.  II,  p.  112. 

1^  Hutchinson:  History  of  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
423,  443. 

18  Cf.  Walker:  History  of  Congregationalism,  pp.  128,  147-148,  197. 
Winthrop,  op.  cit..  Vol.  II,  pp.  149,  212,  307,  308,  332,  397.  Bradford, 
op.  cit.,  p.  461.  John  Stetson  Beary:  History  of  Massachusetts.  First 
Period,  pp.  363-372.      Hutchinson,  op.  cit..  Vol.  I,  pp.  320-321. 

133 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History 

pious,  clever  and  Congregational/^  A  minister 
was  prohibited  by  the  Court  from  preaching 
at  a  wedding ;-°  a  minister  was  summoned  for 
daring  to  organize  a  second  church  in  Saugus 
without  a  council  ;^^  the  church  was  first  ad- 
vised and  later  commanded  to  undertake  a 
mission  to  the  Indians.^^  The  Court  in  1646 
distinctly  stated  that  the  magistrates  were 
bound  to  maintain  the  churches  in  purity  and 
truth  and  hence  could  summon  them  to  councils 
they  deemed  necessary.^^  And  in  1648  the  Cam- 
bridge Synod  thus  summoned  and  attended  by 
all  the  New  England  Colonies,  decreed  that  the 
power  of  the  Magistrate  should  be  exercised 
about  such  outward  acts  ^^as  are  commanded 
or  forbidden  in  the  Word. ' '  ^  *  Heresy,  venting 
corrupt  and  pernicious  opinions,  .  .  .  are  to  be 
restrained  and  punished  by  civil  authority/'^* 
At  one  point,  it  is  true,  our  fathers  were  wise; 
though  the  state  could  interfere  with  the 
church,  the  church  could  not  interfere  with  the 
state.^^  Even  at  Plymouth  the  Governor 
walked  before  the  minister,  though  for  pur- 
poses of  safety  he  walked  behind  Captain 
Standish.^^  A  church  member  could  not  be 
called  to  account  for  his  acts  as  magistrate  nor 

i»  Winthrop,  op.    cit.,    Vol.  I,  pp.   188,  194,  195,   198,  199,  204,  209-210, 
293.     Walker:    History  of  Congregationalism,,  p.  136. 

20  Winthrop,  op.  cit..  Vol.  II,  p.  382. 

21  I.e.,  Vol.  J,  pp.  187,  210,  220.      Vol.  II,  p.  194.      Walker:   History,  p. 
137. 

22  Walker:     History,  p.   165. 

23  Winthrop,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  II,  p.  323. 

24  Walker:    Creeds  and  Platforms,   pp.  236-237. 
2B  Winthrop,    op.  cit..  Vol.  I,  p.  300. 

2«  I  regret  not  to  he  able  at  present  to  refer   to   the  original  authority  for 
this  statement. 

134 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

could  a  minister  be  also  a  magistrate.^'  On 
important  points  of  public  as  well  as  ecclesias- 
tical policy  the  ministers  Avere  summoned  by 
the  court  to  give  advice,  but  only  advice. ^^  Not 
until  1684  was  the  franchise  extended  in  Mas- 
sachusetts to  those  who  were  not  members  of 
churches.  It  was  only  in  1729  that  Baptists 
and  Quakers  were  excused  from  taxation  for 
the  support  of  Congregational  clergy,  and  the 
Episcopalians  had  to  wait  six  years  longer."^ 
Taxation  for  church  purposes  was  discontinued 
only  in  1818  in  Connecticut  and  in  1834 
in  Massachusetts.  There  can  be  no  pretense 
that  these  Congregational  champions  of  free- 
dom grasped  the  great  principle  of  freedom 
from  the  state.  And  bitterly  did  they  pay  for 
their  error.  It  was  through  the  act  of  the 
Connecticut  legislature  that  the  Saybrook 
Synod  was  called  together  to  standardize 
church  practises  in  the  colony.  That  Synod  vir- 
tually renounced  the  liberty  for  which  their 
fathers  braved  so  many  perils.  It  tied  up  the 
churches  to  what  the  Hartford  North  Associa- 
tion ninety  3^ears  later  proudly  called  ^^not  Con- 
gregationalism but  essentially  Presbyterian."  ^° 
This  standardization,  this  tendency  to  con- 
formity and  consolidation,  which  legislatures 

"  Winthrop,  op.  cit.,   Vol.  T,  pp.  299-301. 

^^Cf.  Winthrop,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  117,  133,  183.  Hutchinson,  op. 
cit..  Vol.  I,  p.  434- 

29  Acts  and  Resolves  of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  Vol.  II,  pp. 
494-496,  714-715,  782-783.  At  first  the  support  of  the  clergy  seems  to  hare 
been  voluntary,  but  in  1654,  o-s  the  country  towns  grew  lax,  a  law  providing  for 
ministerial  support  ivas  passed.      Hutchinson,  op.  cit..  Vol.  I,  p.  4^7. 

3"  Cf.  Walker:  History  of  Congregationalism,  p.  207,  for  a  milder  judgment 
of  the  Saybrook  Synod. 

135 


Some  Tuvfiing -Points  in  Churcli  History 

so  like  and  which  this  Connecticut  legislature 
caused,  operated  to  create  friendlier  feelings 
toward  the  Presbyterians  of  the  Middle  States 
than  to  the  Simon  pure  Congregationalism  of 
Massachusetts,  and  had  not  a  little  to  do  with 
the  *  ^  Plan  of  Union, ' '  so  fatal  to  the  growth  of 
the  independent  churches.  A  still  graver  loss 
may  be  directly  traced  to  this  interference  of  the 
state  in  matters  of  church  practise  and  support. 
The  Unitarian  schism  would  have  been  much 
less  widespread  and  much  less  damaging  in 
material  ways  if  members  of  the  parishes — as 
distinct  from  members  of  the  churches — had 
not  felt  a  right  to  have  a  voice  in  the  calling 
of  the  pastor  for  whom  they  were  taxed.  This 
feeling  became  aggressive  and  the  famous 
Dedham  decision  f  ollow^ed,  disallowing  the  right 
of  any  church  to  exist  apart  from  its  parish. 
In  many  churches  that  became  known  as  Uni- 
tarian, the  votes  of  the  Parish  determined  the 
matter.  They  welcomed  Unitarianism  because 
it  seemed  to  them  less  insistent  on  the  deeper 
experience  of  religion.  It  was  more  humane  and 
therefore  more  to  their  liking.  And  so  the 
world,  tied  up  to  the  church,  wrecked  it  when 
the  chance  came  its  way.  For  Unitarianism, 
the  representative  of  liberal-minded  religion, 
was  swamped  by  the  dominance  of  the  unre- 
ligious,  and  the  mng  that  was  more  conserva- 
tive and  more  religious — though  perhaps  more 
mistaken  doctrinally — lost  much  of  its  footing 
in  the  community  which  it  had  founded. 

130 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

Yet  notwithstanding  this  colossal  mistake 
of  tying  Church  and  State  together,  Congrega- 
tionalism succeeded  eventually  in  establishing 
a  free  church  in  America,  which  is  more  influ- 
ential and  more  thoroughgoing  in  its  freedom 
than  any  other  of  the  free  churches  of  the 
world.  And  it  did  more  than  that.  For  not 
only  are  Church  and  State  separated  in  Amer- 
ica as  in  no  other  Christian  nation)  save  per- 
haps most  recently  in  France),  but  no  matter 
how  strict  the  connectionalism  of  some  of  the 
denominations  may  be,  the  individual  church 
is  regarded  throughout  the  country  as  the  real 
seat  of  power.  The  courts  of  New  York  State 
have  recently  ruled  that  a  Presbytery,  while 
possessing  the  right  to  dissolve  a  Presbyterian 
church  without  its  consent,  cannot  thereby 
procure  the  right  to  its  building,  inherent  in  the 
Board  of  its  Trustees  as  a  civil  corporation. 
This  heavy  straw  shows  the  direction  of  the 
wind  here  in  America.  We  are  widely  congre- 
gationally  organized — the  Baptists,  Disciples, 
Congregationalists  and  smaller  bodies  make  up 
a  very  large  per  cent,  of  American  Christianity 
— but  we  are  almost  altogether  congregation-| 
ally  spirited.  T 

That  Congregationalism  has  had  so  large  a 
part  in  so  vast  a  spiritual  achievement  is  due  I 
think  primarily  to  four  factors,  two  of  which 
were  formal  and  two  of  which  were  personal 
and  providential.    Though  there  are  many  fas- 

137 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

cinating  by-ways  into  which  I  should  like  to 
enter,  we  must  confine  our  attention  to  these. 

The  first  of  these  factors  is,  of  course,  the 
fundamental  Congregational  conviction  con- 
cerning the  nature  of  the  church.  There  is 
little  difference  here  among  the  various  notable 
Congregational  pronouncements.  In  1606,  for 
example,  the  church  at  Amsterdam,  antedating 
the  famous  Pilgrim  Church  at  Leyden,  declared 
itself  as  follows  in  the  petition  it  presented  at 
the  accession  of  King  James :  ^^  Every  true  visi- 
ble Church  is  a  company  of  people  called  and 
separated  from  the  world  by  the  word  of  God 
and  joyned  together  by  voluntarie  profession  of 
the  faith  of  Christ  in  the  fellowship  of  the 
Gospell.  Being  thus  joyned,  every  Church  hath 
power  in  Christ  to  take  unto  themselves  meet 
and  sufficient  persons  into  the  Offices  and  func- 
tions of  Pastors,  Teachers,  Elders,  Deacons 
and  Helpers,  as  those  which  Christ  hath  ap- 
pointed in  his  Testament. ' '  ^^  With  this  con- 
curs the  declaration  of  the  famous  Cambridge 
Synod  of  1648,  called  by  the  Massachusetts 
Court:  *^A  Congregational-church,  is  by  the 
institution  of  Christ  a  part  of  the  Militant- 
visible-church,  consisting  of  a  company  of 
Saints  by  calling,  united  into  one  body,  by  a 
holy  covenant,  for  the  publick  worship  of  God, 
and  the  mutuall  edification  one  of  another,  in 
the  Fellowship  of  the  Lord  Jesus.  .  .  .  There 
may  be  the  essence  and  being  of  a  church  with- 

51  Williston  Walker:   Creeds  and  Platforms  of  Congregationalism,  pp.  78-79  . 

138 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

out  any  officers.  Nevertheless,  though  officers 
be  not  absolutely  necessary  to  the  simple  being 
of  churches  .  .  .  yet  ordinarily  they  are  to  their 
well-being.  ^ '  ^-  This  insistence  not  only  upon 
the  independence  but  complete  autonomy  of  the 
particular  church  was  regarded  by  the  fathers 
as  of  the  very  essence  of  Congregationalism. 
No  ordaining  councils,  with  ministers  of  neigh- 
boring churches  placing  their  hands  upon  the 
head  of  the  elected  pastor,  obscured  the  self- 
completeness  of  the  churches.  In  Browne's 
primitive  church  in  Middleburg,  we  find  his 
more  substantial  colleague  Harrison  writing  in 
1583:  ^^  Whereas  they  tie  the  Ordination  of 
euerie  Minister,  as  it  were,  vnto  the  girdle  of 
other  Ministers — that  is  to  laie  a  greater  bond- 
age vpon  ye  churches  than  they  are  able  to  bear. 
For  admitt  there  be  onelie  one  church  in  a  na- 
tion, and  they  want  a  pastour :  must  they  seeke 
ouer  Sea  and  lande,  to  gett  a  minister  ordained 
by  other  ministers  1 — And  is  it  not  a  dishonour 
to  Christ  Jesus,  the  head  of  euery  congregation, 
which  is  his  bodie :  to  say  that  his  body  together 
with  the  heade,  is  not  able  to  be  sustained  and 
preserued  in  it  selfef^^ 

The  first  ordination  and  election  of  a 
minister  upon  American  soil  at  the  church  of 
Salem,  ^^  which  was  ye  2.  church  erected  in  these 
parts,''  conformed  strictly  to  this  conception. 
One  of  the  participants  in  that  transaction  on 

32  WiUiston  Walker:  Creeds  and  Platforms  of  Congregationalism,  pp.  205,  210. 
^^Burrage:    Early  English   Dissenters,    Vol.   I,    p.    107. 

139 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History       ' 

the  20th  of  July,  1629,  writes  thus  only  ten  clays  j 
later :  '  ^  So  Mr.  Skelton  was  chosen  pastor,  and  ; 
Mr.  Higginson  to  be  teacher;  and  they  accept-  ' 
ing  the  choyce,  Mr.  Higginson,  with  3.  or  4.  of  | 
the  gravest  members  of  ye  church,  laid  their  | 
hands  on  Mr.  Skelton,  using  prayer  therewith,  i 
This  being  done,  ther  was  imposission  of  hands  | 
on  Mr.  Higginson  also.  And  now,  good  Sir  (the  | 
letter  was  written  to  Governor  Bradford  at  \ 
Plymouth)  I  hope  that  you  and  ye  rest  of  God's  i 
people  with  you  will  say  that  hear  was  a  right  ■ 
foundation  layed,  and  that  these  2.  blessed  ser-  \ 
vants  of  ye  Lojr d  came  in  at  ye  dore,  and  not  at  ! 
ye  window. ' '  ^*  And  Winthrop,  notwithstand-  ' 
ing  his  aristocratic  leanings,  is  compelled  to  | 
make  the  following  entry  in  his  fascinating  i 
journal  under  the  date  of  Sept.  22,  1642:  ^*The  I 
village  at  the  end  of  Charlestown  bounds  was  j 
called  Woburn,  where  they  had  gathered  a  ! 
church,  and  this  day  Mr.  Carter  was  ordained  I 
their  pastor,  with  the  assistance  of  the  elders 
of  other  churches.  Some  difference  there  was  ■ 
about  his  ordination;  some  advised  (I  suspect  < 
Winthrop  himself  of  being  the  spokesman  of  ! 
these  some)  in  regard  they  had  no  elder  of  their  : 
own,  nor  any  members  very  fit  to  solemnize  such  ' 
an  ordinance,  they  would  desire  some  of  the  i 
elders  of  the  other  churches  to  have  performed  I 
it ;  but  others  supposing  it  might  be  an  occasion  : 
of  introducing  a  dependency  of  churches,  etc.,  j 
and  so  a  presbytery,  would  not  allow  it.    So  it  I 

^Bradford:     History  of  Plimouih  Plantation,  p.  317.  \ 

140  I 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

was  performed  by  one  of  their  own  members, 
but  not  so  well  and  orderly  as  it  ought. ' '  ^^  With 
such  a  godly  fear  prevailing  among  the  settlers 
of  the  Bay,  we  can  understand  why  it  was  that 
sturdy  objection  was  raised  to  fortnightly  min- 
isters^ meetings;  but  Winthrop  writes  that 
*  ^  this  fear  was  without  cause ;  for  they  were  all 
clear  in  that  point,  that  no  church  or  person 
can  have  power  over  another  church. ' '  ^®  Were 
it  well  if  that  godly  fear  could  again  be  stirred 
into  life  to-day? 

Historians  have  often  wondered  why  the 
New  England  churches  were  all  gathered  in  the 
Congregational  way,  when  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
were  the  only  outspoken  Congregationalists 
among  the  emigrants.  But  it  would  seem  to  me 
that  the  Puritans  of  the  Church  of  England, 
who  dominated  the  flourishing  colony  of  Massa- 
chusetts Bay,  were  better  acquainted  with 
Congregationalism  than  with  Presbyterianism. 
Take  away  the  bishops  from  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, and  you  have  left  parish  churches,  one  of 
which,  at  least,  in  the  17th  century  had  secured 
the  right  of  electing  its  own  clergymen."  In 
1605,  we  find  a  non-separatist  affirming:  ^^A 
true  Visible  or  Ministeriall  Church  of  Christ  is 
a  particular  Congregation  being  a  spirituall 
perfect  Corporation  of  Believers,  and  having 
power  in  its  selfe  immediately  from  Christ  to 
administer  all  Eeligious  meanes  of  faith  to  the 

38  Winthrop,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  109,  110. 

36  I.e.,  Vol.  I,  p.  139. 

3'  Cf.  Burrage:    New  Facts  Concerning  John  Robinson,  p.  21. 

141 


Some  Turning-Points  in  Church  History       j 

members  thereof. '  *  ^^     And  John  Endecott  of  i 
Salem  assures  Gov.  Bradford  that  the  Plym-  | 
outh   form   of   God's   worship   is    ^Hhe   same  ; 
which  I  have  professed  and  maintained,  ever  : 
since  the  Lord  in  mercie  revealed  himself e  unto  : 
me ;  being  f arr  from  the  commone  reporte  that  , 
hath  been  spread  of  you  touching  that  perticu-  ' 
ler.''  ^^    The  astute  John  Eobinson  was  right  in 
assuring  the  daring  adventurers  of  the  deep  ■ 
^^that   many    of   those   who    both   wrate    and 
preached  against  them,  if  they  were  in  a  place  i 
wher  they  might  have  libertie  and  live  com- 
fortably,  they   would   then   practise    as    they 
did.*'  ^°    At  any  rate  we  have  Bradford's  word 
for  it  ^^that  there  was  no  agreement  by  any  ' 
solemn  or  common  consultation,  but  that  it  is  j 
true  they  did,  as  if  they  had  agreed,  by  the  i 
same  spirit  of  truth  and  unity,  set  up,  by  the 
help  of  Christ,  the  same  model  of  churches,  one 
like  to  another;  and  if  they  of  Plimouth  have 
helped  any  of  the  first  comers  in  their  theory 
by    hearing    and    discerning    their    practises,  j 
therein  the  Scripture  is  fulfilled  that  the  King-  | 
dom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  leaven  which  a  i 
woman  took  and  hid  in  a  measure  of  meal  until 
the  whole  was  leavened. ' '  *^ 

But  fundamentally  our  forefathers  were  Con- 
gregationalists  not  because  of  the  habits  of  the 
past,  nor  certainly  because  they  believed  our 

^^  Early  English  Dissenters,    Vol.   I,   pp.   286. 
^^  Bradford,  op.  cit.,  p.  316. 

<"  Hutchinson:   History  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  Vol.  I,  p.   4^8   (quoted  from 
Bradford) . 

i^Burrage,  op.  cit..  Vol.  I,  p.  362. 

142 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

polity  conducive  to  religious  growth  and  ex- 
pressive of  individual  liberty,  but  because  they 
discovered  it  in  the  New  Testament.  Unlike  the 
more  logical  Anabaptists,  they  simply  struck 
out  from  the  church  organization  all  apostles, 
prophets  and  evangelists  as  extraordinary  and 
proceeded  to  organize  on  ordinary  ground.  This 
saving  bit  of  arbitrary  exegesis  saved  them 
from  that  completely  imitative  polity  of  the 
founders  of  the  continental  free  churches,  and 
gave  us  Congregationalism.  It  was  however  a 
long  time  after  it  had  been  practised  that  any 
other  reason  was  assigned  for  its  erection  than 
that  it  was  so  ordained  in  the  Word  of  God. 
Only  under  the  sting  of  the  Saybrook  platform 
and  its  treason  to  fundamental  principles  of 
church  independency,  did  John  Wise,  ^^  Pastor 
to  a  Church  in  Ipswich, ' '  dare  to  put  Congrega- 
tionalism on  an  independent  basis.  After  of 
course  affirming  unquestionable  Biblical  au- 
thority for  it,  he  proceeds  as  he  says  to  **open 
a  new  realm  of  thought''  by  writing:  ^^When 
the  aforesaid  government  or  power,  settled  in 
all,  when  they  have  Elected  certain  capable  Per- 
son^ to  Minister  in  their  affairs,  and  the  said 
Ministers  remain  accountable  to  the  Assembly 
.  .  .  they  will  be  more  apt  and  inclined  to  steer 
Right  for  the  main  Point,  viz..  The  peculiar 
good,  and  benefit  of  the  whole,  and  every  par- 
ticular member  fairly  and  sincerely.  And  why 
may  not  these  stand  for  very  Rational  Pleas  in 
Church  Order?    For  certainly  if  Christ  has  set- 

143 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

tied  any  form  of  Power  in  his  Church,  he  has 
done  it  for  his  Churches  safety,  and  for  the 
Benefit  of  every  Member :  Then  he  must  needs 
have  been  presumed  to  have  made  choice  of 
that  Goverimient  as   should  least  Expose  his 
People  to  Hazard,  either  from  the  fraud,  or 
Arbitrary  measures  of  particular  Men.     And 
it  is  plain  as  day  light,  there  is  no  Species  of 
Government  like  a  Democracy  to  attain  this 
End.''  *^    Here,  indeed,  as  far  as  was  then  pos- 
sible, is  Congregationalism  made  to  stand  upon 
its  own  feet.     It  is  the  true  Christian  polity, 
not  merely  because  it  is  undoubtedly  biblical 
but  because  it  is  just  as  undoubtedly  conducive 
to  the  spiritual  welfare  of  men.    Yea,  Wise  goes 
a  step  further  forward  when  he  proclaims  Con- 
gregationalism to  be   alone  in  harmony  with 
essential  manhood.  ^^He  (God)  sets  the  Will  to 
turn  about  itself  without  forcing  it,  that  so 
man's  Eeligion  may  be  the  free  and  candid 
Emanations  of  his  Noble  and  Exalted  Nature. 
But  when  God  has  thus  gained  Man;  may  we 
rationally  imagine  that  in  erecting  his  Trophies 
he  will  assign  and  make  him  over  to  some  Petty 
and  Arbitrary  Potentates  in  matters   of  Ee- 
ligion? or  settle  him  under  a  Despotick  Gov- 
ernment as  though  he  was  the  spoils  of  a  spite- 
ful War!    No  certainly,  but  Man  must  now  be 
considered  as   some  high  Allie  invested  with 
more  Power  than  ever."*^     Thus  deeply  and 

«  Wise:  A  Vindication  of  the  Government  of  New  England  Churches,  p.  62 
"  I.e.,  pp.  72-73. 

144 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

strongly  does  Wise  found  Congregationalism 
on  that  reverence  for  man  which  is  of  the  es- 
sence of  Christianity,  with  which  it  comports 
and  which  it  does  so  much  to  emphasize. 

The  other  formal  factor  which  I  would  em- 
phasize is  not  fellowship,  though  it  is  very 
abiding  and  important.  But  fellowship  was 
nothing  novel;  men  had  been  fellowshipped  to 
death;  it  was  the  freedom  of  fellowship  which 
made  it  beneficial.  I  choose  for  brief  remark 
rather  the  definite  bond  of  union  which  in  Con- 
gregational eyes,  from  the  very  beginning, 
makes  a  group  of  men  into  a  church,  viz.,  the 
Covenant.**  The  exiles  in  Frankfurt  in  Queen 
Mary's  time  made  use  of  such  an  instrument,*^ 
and  Burrage  tells  us  that  some  of  the  Conti- 
nental Anabapftists  did  likewise,**^  but  in  the 
former  case  the  covenant  was  an  afterthought 
introduced  as  the  basis  of  discipline  and  in  the 
latter  it  was  not  the  constituting  element.  But 
from  the  very  first,  beginning  with  Robert 
Browne  and  possibly  even  with  Fitz,  a  Congre- 
gational church  was  created  by  the  covenant. 
The  precise  importance  of  the  covenant  is  no- 
where better  set  forth  than  in  a  letter  of  a  Vicar 
of  Cranf ord  in  1640 :  '  ^  The  Brownists  stick  not 
only  at  our  Bishops,  seruice  and  Ceremonies 
but  at  our  Church.  They  would  haue  euery 
particular    congregation    to    be    independent. 

**  Cf.  Hutchinson:  History  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  Vol.  I,  p.  4^0.  Here 
the  covenant  and  not  fellowship  is  mentioned  as  one  of  the  fundamental  Con- 
gregational principles. 

^^  Burrage,  op.  cit..  Vol.  I,  p.  7A. 

«  I.e.,  Vol.  I,  p.  98. 

145 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

They  would  haue  none  enter  Communion  but 
by  solmne  Couenant.  Not  that  made  in  Bap- 
tisme,  or  renewed  in  the  Supper  of  the  Lord, 
but  another  for  reformation  after  theire  owne 
way : "  ^^  The  Covenant  was  precisely  what  the 
scandalized  Vicar  thought  and  almost  said.  It 
was  in  reality  a  third  sacrament,  far  more  im- 
portant than  the  minimized  baptism,  adminis- 
tered in  infancy,  and  a  prerequisite  for  the  en- 
joyment of  the  Supper.  It  is  somewhat  difficult 
to  see  how  they  discovered  this  significance  of 
the  Covenant  in  the  Scripture;  it  looks  almost 
as  if  they  installed  the  Covenant  in  this  all- 
important  place  by  the  compulsion  of  their 
moral  instincts.  At  any  rate  they  thereby 
made  good  a  serious  defect  of  the  Anabap- 
tists. They  put  an  act  of  the  will,  com- 
pelled by  the  Holy  Spirit,  at  the  foundation 
of  the  Church  and  thus  completely  broke  with 
sacramentalism.  The  Baptists,  as  we  have 
seen,  did  not  ascribe  salvation  to  baptism,  but 
their  insistence  upon  it  as  the  bond  of  church 
fellowship  has  confused  their  owti  life  and  mis- 
represented them  before  the  world.  From  the 
beginning,  the  Congregationalist  has  empha- 
sized moral  values  in  religious  experience.  The 
autonomy  of  the  church  and  the  entrance  into 
its  holy  activities  and  privileges  through  a  per- 
sonal commitment  of  the  life  to  its  Creator  has 
made  it  an  undeviating  and  effective  witness  to 
the  supreme  worth  of  the  individual  will.     It 

"  Burrage,  op.  cit..  Vol.  I,  p.  311. 

146 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

has  presented  Christianity  to  men  at  its  sim- 
plest and  most  characteristic  point,  unmixed  by 
magic  or  pomp.  It  is  a  singularly  pure  exem- 
plar of  the  voluntary  principle  in  religion. 

From  the  beginning  Congregational  covenants 
have  been  of  the  simplest  sort.  Some  good  Prov- 
idence guided  the  instinct  of  our  fathers  into 
ways  that  led  to  liberty.  John  Robinson,  the 
pastor  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  declared: 
*  ^  Euery  true  Church  of  God  is  ioyned  with  him 
in  holye  covenant  by  voluntarye  profession  to 
haue  him  the  God  therof  and  to  be  his  peo- 
ple.''^^  In  1616  Henry  Jacob  ^ ^founded"  a 
Congregational  church  in  London.  We  read: 
*^They  joyned  both  hands  each  with  other 
Brother  and  stood  in  a  Ringwise:  their  intent 
being  declared,  H.  Jacob  and  each  of  the  Eest 
made  some  confession  or  Profession  of  their 
Faith  and  Repentance,  some  were  longer,  some 
were  briefer.  Then  they  covenanted  together 
to  walk  in  all  Gods  Ways  as  he  revealed  or 
should  make  known  to  them.  ^ '  ^^  And  to  go  ten 
years  further  back  to  the  sacred  soil  of 
Norwich,  where  the  Church  arose  which  went 
in  part  by  way  of  alien  Leyden  to  America, 
Bradford  makes  this  affecting  note  in  his  rather 
matter-of-fact  journal:  ^'So  many  therfore  of 
these  processors  as  saw  the  evil  of  these  things, 
in  thes  parts,  and  whose  hearts  ye  Lord  had 
touched  with  heavenly  zeale  for  his  trueth,  they 

*^Burrage:     New  Facts  Concerning  John   Robinson,   p,   17. 
i^Burrage:   Early  English  Dissenters,   Vol.  II,   p.  294. 

147 


Some  Turning -Points  in  Church  History 

shooke  of  this  yoake  of  antichristian  bondage, 
and  as  ye  Lord's  free  people,  joyned  themselves 
(by  a  covenant  of  the  Lord)  into  a  Church 
estate,  in  ye  fellowship  of  ye  gospell,  to  walke 
in  all  his  wayes,  made  known,  or  to  be  made 
known  unto  them,  according  to  their  best  en- 
deavours, whatsoever  it  should  cost  them,  the 
Lord  assisting  them.  And  that  it  cost  them 
something  this  ensewing  historic  will  de- 
clare. * '  °°  And  this  simplicity  of  the  Covenant 
declaration  was  preserved  in  the  new  country, 
the  noble  confession  of  the  first  gathered 
church,  the  church  in  Salem,  leading  the  way. 
The  confession  is  still  in  use  and  reads  as  fol- 
lows: *^We  covenant  with  the  Lord  and  one 
with  an  other;  and  doe  bynd  ourselves  in  the 
presence  of  God,  to  walke  together  in  all  his 
waies,  according  as  he  is  pleased  to  reveale 
himself  unto  us  in  his  Blessed  word  of  truth.'' 
In  the  Providence  of  God,  the  confessions  of 
faith  usually  adopted  by  the  individual 
churches  have  fallen  away  and  the  Covenant 
as  the  sole  basis  of  church  membership  and 
Christian  belief  for  both  ministers  and  laymen 
is  becoming  more  and  more  the  rule  in  our 
churches.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  differen- 
tiating mark  of  Congregationalism  is  neither 
conservatism  nor  liberalism  but  true  Catholic- 
ity of  temper!  For  the  ancient  declaration  of 
Bradshaw  in  1605  still  stands:  ^^They  hould 
that    Christ    Jesus    hath    not    subiected    any 

^^ Bradford:    History  of  Plimouth  Plantation,  p.  13. 

US 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

Church  or  Congregation  of  his,  to  any  other 
superior  Ecclesiasticall  luriscliction,  then  vnto 
that  which  is  within  itself.  So  that  yf  a  wholl 
Churche  or  Congregation  shall  erre,  in  any 
matters  of  faith  or  religion,  noe  other  Churches 
or  Spirituall  Church  officers  haue  (by  any  war- 
rant from  the  word  of  God)  power  to  censure, 
punish,  or  controule  the  same :  but  are  onely  to 
counsell  and  aduise  the  same,  and  so  leaue  their 
Soules  to  the  immediate  Judgment  of  Christ/'  ^^ 
Having  thus  won  the  proud  distinction  of  pro- 
viding the  church  of  Christ  with  the  only  pos- 
sible basis  of  Catholicity,  the  vast  responsibil- 
ity is  upon  us  of  demonstrating  that  Catholicity 
and  Holiness  are  not  mutually  exclusive  terms. 
We  have  rewritten  the  word  Catholic  before  the 
word  Church;  would  that  with  as  good  con- 
science we  might  point  to  our  groups  of  Chris- 
tian disciples  and  feel,  if  we  did  not  say,  '^Here 
are  holy  catholic  churches. '' 

There  is  time  for  only  the  briefest  refer- 
ence to  the  two  non-ecclesiastical  factors 
in  the  lasting  triumph  of  our  polity.  The  first 
of  these  is  the  personal  character  of  the  Pil- 
grim and  Puritan  Fathers;  the  second,  a  new 
country  in  which  to  work  our  polity  out.  With- 
out them  our  principles  would  not  be  written 
so  large  in  religious  history,  yet  for  them  our 
principles  were  not  responsible.  As  in  every 
other  crisis  of  church  polity  we  have  discov- 
ered that  the  condition  of  the  world  at  large 

^^Burrage,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  288. 

149 


Some  Turning-points  in  Church  History 

was  partly  responsible  for  the  course  and  the 
outcome  of  the  development  of  Christian  or- 
ganization, so  it  is  here.  A  thoroughgoing 
study  of  Church  Polity  would  be  fascinating 
in  the  extreme,  because  it  would  be  an  investi- 
gation of  those  currents  of  human  thought  and 
emotion  sufficiently  widespread  and  dominant 
to  express  themselves  in  the  activities  of  one  of 
the  two  abiding  institutions  of  human  society. 
No  Church  polity  was  made  from  inner  im- 
pulses alone  and  each  advance  step  has  de- 
pended upon  a  Providential  interaction  of  in- 
ternal and  external  forces.  In  observing  the 
mighty  achievement  of  our  ecclesiastical  ideals, 
we  have  to  record  our  gratitude  that  it  was  at- 
tained largely  by  the  personal  character  of 
their  representatives  and  the  unparalleled  op- 
portunity of  an  unoccupied  land  which  their 
daring  and  their  patience  utilized. 

I  am  not  so  sure  that  Bacon  was  wrong  when 
he  declared  in  1592  that  the  Brownists  in  Eng- 
land were  ^^a  very  small  number  of  very  base 
and  silly  people, '  *  for  at  that  time  all  who  were 
at  all  conspicuous  were  forced  to  flee  to  wide- 
hearted  Holland.  And  of  the  exiles,  there  were 
not  a  few  of  a  sort  to  justify  Archbishop  Ban- 
croft's remark  in  1593:  ^^I  know  the  nature  of 
schismatickes  to  bee  of  such  giddinesse  as  that 
no  one  thinge  will  content  them  longe. ' '  ^^  The 
'^ancient  church ''  in  Amsterdam  was  speedily 
rent  by  dissensions  that  remind  one  of  Ubbo 

^^Burrage,  op.  cit.,   Vol.  I,  p.  139. 

150 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

Philipps'  account  of  the  Anabaptists  and  that 
caused  an  onlooker  to  say  of  them :  ^  ^  There  are 
none  willing  to  bee  feete  or  any  other  inferior 
members,  they  would  all  bee  heads/'  But  the 
Pilgrim  Fathers  were  of  a  differe(nt  stripe. 
When  forced  to  leave  Scrooby,  they  landed  at 
Amsterdam,  but  they  purposely  went  further 
on  to  Leyden  with  the  express  desire  to  avoid 
mingling  with  the  squabbles  of  their  co-religion- 
ists who  had  preceded  them  thither.  Both  they 
and  the  Puritans  who  followed  them  to  America 
left  the  Church  of  England  with  extreme  re- 
luctance and  only  so  far  and  for  so  long  as 
their  consciences  impelled  them.  They  never 
berated  those  who  persecuted  them  and  I  have 
no  doubt  that  John  Eobinson,  at  least,  prayed 
for  them.  William  Brewster  and  William 
Bradford  were  men  of  gentle  though  unwaver- 
ing character,  of  measureless  patience  and  of 
sacrificing  spirit.  Of  John  Endecott  we  do  not 
get  a  clear  picture,  but  John  Winthrop  was  kept 
both  by  his  property  and  family  interests  from 
reviling  order,  from  despising  tolerance  and 
from  glorying  in  isolation.  Roger  Williams 
was  not  well  treated  by  these  men;  it  may  be 
that  he  was  too  idealistic  for  them,  it  is  certain 
that  he  w^as  too  self-righteous.  When  a  man 
carries  his  separatism  so  far  that  he  refuses 
to  commune  with  his  own  wife,  there  is  some- 
thing wrong  with  him.  Williams  became  for  a 
short  while  an  Anabaptist,  and  with  good  rea- 
son, for  that  noble  high-minded  man  is  a  splen- 

151 


Some  Turning-points  in  Church  History 

did  embodiment  of  the  deep  insight  mixed 
with  stubborn  intolerance  and  ill-poised  judg- 
ment that  characterized  that  movement. 
Our  progenitors  succeeded  just  because  they 
disliked  their  separatism  and  sought  to  make 
it  as  slight  as  might  be.  I  do  not  know 
of  any  more  sane  and  moving  writings 
in  the  world  than  the  respective  journals 
of  Bradford  and  Winthrop,  which,  with 
very  necessary  excisions,  should  be  read  by 
every  lover  of  his  country  and  his  church.  Were 
there  time  to  quote  the  affecting  but  matter- 
of-fact  eulogies  which  Bradford  writes  of 
Eobinson  and  Brewster,  their  worth  and  suc- 
cess would  be  clearer  to  you.  The  leaders  were 
all  men  of  experience  with  the  world  and  the 
ministers  were,  many  of  them,  among  the  most 
gifted  graduates  of  Cambridge  University. 
The  Anabaptists  left  the  State  churches  of  the 
Continent  with  the  three  glad  leaps  which 
Christian  took  when  he  saw  his  burden  drop 
into  the  sepulchre;  the  Congregationalists,  on 
the  otiier  hand,  made  the  change  with  much 
the  same  spirit  with  which  the  earliest  Chris- 
tians were  forced  out  of  the  synagogues. 
In  religion  it  is  only  inevitable  changes  that  are 
permanent  changes;  intolerant  revolutions  are 
short-lived. 

But  it  was  the  new  country  which  reinforced 
the  character  of  the  Congregational  separatists 
and  robbed  their  separatism  of  the  inevitable 
tinge  of  Pharisaism  which  must  to  the  public 

152 


Contribution  to  Church  Polity 

mind  always  inhere  in  a  separatist  fellowship 
which  exists  side  by  side  with  an  established 
church.  But  with  an  ocean  between  you  and 
your  established  church,  the  tinge  of  self-right- 
eousness disappears.  Indeed,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  separatists  became  in  a  sense  the  establish- 
ment ;  only  the  freedom  of  their  essential  prin- 
ciple saved  them  from  a  shipwreck  on  the  Scylla 
of  governmental  exclusiveness  after  having  es- 
caped by  a  wide  margin  the  danger  of  the  Cha- 
rybdis  of  voluntary  Pharisaism.  It  was  the 
ocean  and  the  Indians  and  the  hard  work  of  con- 
quering a  new  continent  for  the  ways  of  civiliza- 
tion that  kept  the  Pilgrims  from  the  disaster 
that  befell  the  Congregationalists  of  Middleburg 
and  Amsterdam  and  from  the  mediocre  success 
of  English  Independency.  Governor  Brad- 
ford's journal  has  more  to  say  about  the  state 
of  the  beaver-trade  than  of  the  church.  God 
kept  the  spirit  of  the  fathers  pure  and  strong 
by  enforcing  upon  them,  and  finally  by  estab- 
lishing upon  them,  the  work  of  their  hands. 
The  ocean  is  not  only  our  best  defence  against 
the  barbarous  jealousies  and  armies  of  Europe ; 
it  was  the  instrument  of  God  for  ridding  a 
necessary  religious  revolution  from  bitterness 
and  for  fixing  its  attention  upon  its  faith  rather 
than  upon  its  protest.  For  to  that  ^^deep,  un- 
plumbed,  estranging  sea''  we  owe  not  a  little 
of  that  great  process  by  which  Protestantism 
has  become  transformed  into  spiritual 
Catholicism. 

153 


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